The Detroit Lions are rebuild ready barring a miracle

Detroit Lions – Quinn by the numbers

These repetitive conditions are the fault of coaching but also of player-personnel, meaning that hiring another coach but leaving the person responsible for signing all of the players on the roster and choosing the head coach is not addressing all of the problems. Quinn’s regime has utterly failed in every measurable way.

Quinn took over a team in 2016 that went 9-7 in his first year, lost its wildcard game, and it has gotten worse ever since. His record was 27-38-1 prior to the match with the Arizona Cardinals in Week 3, statistics from Pro Football Reference. His personally chosen head coach is 10-24-1 and shows few signs of getting it right, although he’s been close a lot.

Lions fans gave Quinn leeway when he opted to keep former head coach Jim Caldwell around for two seasons citing winning records, general competitiveness, and the fan base’s desire to see stability from the front office. When Quinn declared Caldwell’s 9-7 record not good enough, he was widely supported for not accepting mediocrity. He was then allowed to select the next coach, Matt Patricia.

We all delayed judgment of Patricia due to converting the defense to his multiple-look defense and then the injuries that took place in 2019. Our main source of hope was a string of close losses that allowed us to think that once players were healthy and a few new pieces were acquired that those losses would be converted into wins.

Quarterback Matthew Stafford is healthy, the offense has proven capable, albeit missing a few pieces. However, the defense which is supposed to be the head coach’s forte is very consistently poor at closing out games. If that doesn’t change significantly and quickly both Quinn and Patricia will be moving on in the near future.