Detroit Lions win, but they should lose Matt Patricia

Despite the Detroit Lions’ recent win, Matt Patricia still needs to go

The Detroit Lions walked out of Ford Field on Sunday feeling really good about themselves. Especially kicker Matt Prater who hit a game winning 59-yard field goal as time expired, propelling the Lions to a 4-5 record.

But even with the Lions feeling good about the win, the biggest takeaway from the Week 10 contest is still a negative. The Pride got out to an early lead in Sunday’s game against the Washington Football Team.

The Lions finished the first quarter up 7-3 with the defense playing bend-don’t-break football. Washington was able to move the ball deep into Detroit territory, but the defense stood tall.

At the end of the first half, the Motor City held a 17-3 lead over D.C., but as fans of this franchise, we knew that lead wasn’t safe. The Pride would strike once again to start the third quarter, but that would be all she wrote for a while as Washington quarterback Alex Smith started leading a comeback.

No disrespect to Smith as he should win NFL Comeback Player of the Year and I am so happy that he is able to play football again. But for the Lions to blow a 21-point lead to him and The Football Team is unacceptable.

Smith threw for 390 yards on Sunday against a Lions secondary that was being roasted all game long. Although Washington only ran for 89 yards, they ran at ease when they wanted to.

As momentum started to shift at Ford Field, FOX, who was on the broadcast for Sunday’s game, showed Lions’ head coach Matt Patrica’s face after the game was 24-17. And it appeared to me his expression was one of “here we go again”. There was no visible frustration from him or anger towards his defense not playing well. It just seemed to me to be an “oh well” type of attitude.

Lions’ general manger Bob Quinn hired Patricia to fix what the organization thought was the only thing holding them back, the defense. Without looking at any stats or numbers, the Pride have added big name pieces over the last three seasons, but they somehow look worse.

At the end of the day, “The Patriot Way” or Matt Patricia being a “defensive genius or rocket scientist” isn’t working. He was unqualified to be an NFL head coach and he hasn’t done anything to prove he should still be in Motown. Despite the win for the Detroit Lions this Sunday, they still need to move on from their head coach.