The Detroit Lions need to stop bending and play defense

It’s time to stop bending and play defense

I admit that I’ve never been a fan of the concept of bend but don’t break defense. Playing defense is about stopping your opponent in their tracks and getting the ball back to the offense. Early in the season when the Lions were the recipient of many turnovers, it balanced out the bend but don’t break philosophy, by getting the defense off the field by means of causing turnovers.

Yet as the season has worn on the turnovers have become more scarce and opponents have been sustaining more drives and ironically enough, scoring more points, as the Lions defense has been free-falling towards the bottom of the NFL.

So the real question is; how can Matt Patricia turn this defense around? The answer, unfortunately, is the one Patricia doesn’t want; get aggressive.

Opposing offenses have been controlling the line of scrimmage and it’s time to start stacking the box in rushing situations and blitzing on passing downs. I know Patricia worries about enemy quarterbacks reading the blitz and taking advantage of it, but is allowing them all day to search for a receiver really any better?

At least when opposing quarterbacks are blitzed it forces them to execute under pressure, even if they know where they need to go to defeat the blitz.

The only way Patricia’s beloved defense actually works is if the defensive line dominates the line of scrimmage. They have clearly not been close to dominating the line of scrimmage and need to find ways to make up for that deficiency. Call it desperate measures for desperate times. If it doesn’t work, at least the attempt to fix the problem would have been made instead of just doing the same thing which hasn’t worked.

At this point, Matt Patricia and his staff need to start finding solutions if they expect to even give themselves a chance at making some kind of miraculous run back into the playoff picture. Defense wins championships and if the Lions don’t start playing much better defense then the season is over because what they’re doing now is just plain broken.