Detroit Lions: Winning starts up front, where’s the beef?

Poor personnel decisions haunt the Lions

Football is a fundamental sport. Running, passing, blocking, and tackling are the basics that any team must be good at in order to succeed. The Lions are good at exactly one of those phases. The rest of them have suffered severely under the guidance of Matt Patricia.

As a matter of fact, the Lions aren’t good at almost any defensive facet of the game despite Patricia being a literal rocket scientist and defensive specialist.

Consider this; Patricia basically pink-slipped almost every defensive linemen from the Jim Caldwell era to re-build it in his own image. It then failed miserably until the acquisition of Damon ‘Snack’ Harrison who almost single-handedly turned around the entire defense on his own.

Then Bob Quinn and Matt Patricia made some hand-picked additions last offseason that on paper had the defensive line looking almost unstoppable and priming the fan base for a huge season by the defense.

Instead, they couldn’t have possibly been any worse and now, just two seasons after Quinn and Patricia started rebuilding the defensive line, they are back to square one and rebuilding it again. As Harrison was released and both Mike Daniels and A’Shawn Robinson won’t be re-signed.

Meanwhile, the offensive line has been Bob Quinn’s baby. He has drafted two offensive linemen in the first round, another vital piece in the third round who will soon be leaving via free agency and overpaid for two others in free agency. One of whom retired after the Lions decided to let him go due to health concerns.

Today the offensive line is still inconsistent like this whole franchise. Of all the O-linemen that Bob Quinn has brought in, only one of them, center Frank Ragnow, is living up to the hype.

The point? Much like the defensive line, the offensive line needs some rebuilding. Perhaps not as much as the defensive line, but let’s be honest, it’s close enough and considering all the assets that have gone into building it, this shouldn’t be happening. Poor personnel decisions are haunting the Lions.

And for anyone unsure, no they don’t often have this problem in New England. When the Patriots decide they’re done with a player, they almost always have another option on their roster ready to plug right in.