Detroit Lions: Despite the win, there are still plenty of questions

You want to impress me? Play like that against real teams

There are very few things we can take out of the win against the Jaguars. The offensive line dominated the line of scrimmage even with the continual rotating of players in and out of the lineup. However, the Jaguars’ defensive line is awful and the linebackers aren’t much better right now.

So it’s hard to hand out too many platitudes to the Lions offensive line for executing against what is probably the worst defensive front they will see all season.

The Lions defensive front fared almost as well against the banged-up Jacksonville offensive line. They pressured Gardner Minshew throughout the game and helped force him into bad throws.

As a matter of fact, Matt Patricia had a good solid game plan for the defense and after scaling things back, they executed as they should against the over-match Jaguar offense.

The question is this; how much credit should the defense get for dominating the pathetic Jaguar offense? I have said for some time that I believed the Lions defense could be average with better scheming. The fact that they played better than average against an inferior opponent doesn’t prove a whole lot.

You want to impress me? Play like that against the Packers or Saints.

Matt Patricia has been inflexible with his defense for two seasons. Now as the Lions sit at 2-3 we should realize this; in the two games this season that Patricia stepped outside of the confines of his usual system and actually played more aggressively and mixed up coverages more, the Lions have won.

In games where it’s been the same old nonsense, they are 0-3 this season.

Sure Green Bay and New Orleans are pretty good teams, but they had victory all but secured in the opener against the Bears and gave it away.

Nobody wins them all, but in three years on the job, Matt Patricia has stubbornly insisted on running the defense his way even though it clearly hasn’t worked. When he has mixed things up and been more aggressive, the defense has actually been sort of encouraging.

But does anyone want to bet they go back to their old Patricia ways in Atlanta this week?