Editor’s note: This is an opinion piece from MLive.com reporter Kyle Meinke.
LANDOVER, Md. -- Washington won just one of its first 10 games, so you’ll have to forgive Dwayne Haskins if he forgot how to, you know, win.
When Washington took the field for its victory formation on Sunday afternoon against the Detroit Lions, the rookie quarterback was off somewhere taking a selfie with a fan. That’s not a metaphor. Dwayne Haskins was literally taking a selfie with a fan in the stands as Case Keenum scrambled to find his helmet and enter the game for the final knee.
“We were looking for (Haskins),” Washington interim coach Bill Callahan said. “I think he thought the game was over.”
That, guys, is who Detroit lost to 19-16 on Sunday afternoon at FedEx Field.
Washington is an unmitigated, unqualified, unrelenting disaster. That team has a bad rookie quarterback playing for an interim coach just one week after their own fans chanted “Sell The Team!” during a double-digit loss to the New York Jets. This is a team that apparently ruled out Josh Norman against the Lions on Saturday before reportedly “changing their minds" and activating him on Sunday. Then didn’t play him at all.
That team has been a clown show for years under Daniel Snyder.
Which begs the question: What exactly does that make the team that just lost to them?
“I feel like we gave it all we got today,” cornerback Justin Coleman said, “and came up short.”
Gave it all you got? Against a one-win team averaging an NFL-worst 12.5 points per game? And you still lost? For the seventh time in eight games?
Again, I ask: What does that make you?
It makes the Lions an unmitigated, unqualified, unrelenting disaster. That’s what. And there’s no other way to put it.
They said 9-7 was no longer good enough, and good for Bob Quinn for saying it. Someone had to. Jim Caldwell was a better coach than many are willing to give him credit for, and a great man. He was easy to like, and the players loved him through good times and bad. The players fought for him until his very last breath in Detroit. But just because he was consistently not bad doesn’t mean the club was showing any signs of being actually good, and Quinn made the difficult choice to go find something better.
“We didn’t beat the really good teams,” Quinn said after canning Caldwell last year. “Our record was above average. We’re 9-7 the last two years, but our record against the better teams in the league has not been that good.”
With that, Bob Quinn raised the bar in Detroit.
Problem is, now they can’t even beat the really bad teams. And by Bob Quinn’s own measure, Matt Patricia has been an unqualified failure.
The Lions went 6-10 in his debut season. But it’s hard to win in the NFL and Patricia was ushering in a lot of change -- on the field and away from it -- so you can understand why maybe the transition was taking longer than the team expected.
But this is Year 2. Hell, this about to be the final month of Year 2. And the Lions are still worse by just about every measure.
Most discouragingly, they’re worst at the things they are supposed to be the best at. Matt Patricia was hired for his defensive expertise, and this defense is now one of the worst in team history. How does that even happen?
What do Miami, Cincinnati and Arizona have in common? They all suck, sure. They are complete garbage fires that have combined for five wins this season. Oh, and they are the only teams who are playing worse defense than Detroit in 2019.
But, hey, at least they’re all under first-year coaches.
What’s Matt Patricia’s excuse?
They don’t get a hall pass for the injuries either, because this team truly expected to compete for a division championship this season. That was their internal expectation. And they were losing more games than they were winning even when Matthew Stafford was playing at an MVP-like level.
OK, sure, they were better against Washington. Much better, actually. They didn’t even allow an offensive touchdown. They held Washington to 230 total yards, their second best defensive showing of the year, and 144 passing yards. That was a season best.
Then again, if you saw Dwayne Haskins spraying passes everywhere but the press box at FedEx Field, you’d understand that says more about Mr. Selfie than it does anything Detroit actually did defensively. And when it mattered most, Detroit folded again, allowing two late drives for field goals to lose against a team that had won just once all year, and a rookie quarterback who had never won.
Welcome back to rock bottom, Detroit. Don’t forget to get your card punched.
“I mean, right now it definitely feels that (this was our toughest loss),” offensive lineman Graham Glasgow said. “You know, this one doesn’t feel good. So.”
So, indeed. So what what’s next for this franchise? So what to do about Bob Quinn and Matt Patricia?
That’s all anyone wants to talk about these days, even though nobody really knows the inner thinkings of the Ford family. (And beware anyone who tries to tell you otherwise.) That said, the impression I get is the Fords don’t really have an appetite for a second coaching change in as many seasons, which would almost certainly sentence the Lions to yet another season or two of football purgatory. Bob Quinn’s seat is probably warmer right now considering he’s been at the wheel for nearly four years, and each season has been worse than the one before it.
That’s not a metaphor either. They went from 9-7 (and making the playoffs) in Year 1, to 9-7 (and missing the playoffs) in Year 2, to 6-10, to 3-7-1 and counting.
Then again, you can’t exactly fire Quinn without also firing Patricia. And again, while there’s no disputing that Detroit is an unrelenting disaster, my money is on the Fords preferring to see this rebuild through for another season before embarking on another one.
But Patricia is making that decision a tough one heading into Thanksgiving. He sold himself as a defensive genius, and now his defense is one of the worst to ever do it in this town. Every week, he tells us it’s just the techniques, the fundamentals. They just need better pad level. They need to be more consistent. And yet Detroit is either unable to do anything about it, or it was never the problem at all. Either way, that’s on coaching. And the losses keep mounting, even against the bottom of the league.
“We know what the mistakes are, we all saw that out there,” Patricia said in an interview room beneath FedEx Field, some kind of celebration going on next door that was loud enough to hear from the podium. “Gotta do a better job coaching it, and a better job executing it out on the field.”
OK. But when, Matt?
If 9-7 was no longer good enough, Bob, what does that make this?
Yes, it takes time to build a program like the one these guys want to run. But this is the NFL. Nobody gets five years to do anything. And if Quinn and Patricia can’t figure out how to stop the bleeding, they might not even get three.
https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMicGh0dHBzOi8vd3d3Lm1saXZlLmNvbS9saW9ucy8yMDE5LzExL3RoZS1mb3Jkcy1oYXZlLWEtZGVjaXNpb24tdG8tbWFrZS1hbmQtbWF0dC1wYXRyaWNpYS1pc250LW1ha2luZy1pdC1lYXN5Lmh0bWzSAX9odHRwczovL3d3dy5tbGl2ZS5jb20vbGlvbnMvMjAxOS8xMS90aGUtZm9yZHMtaGF2ZS1hLWRlY2lzaW9uLXRvLW1ha2UtYW5kLW1hdHQtcGF0cmljaWEtaXNudC1tYWtpbmctaXQtZWFzeS5odG1sP291dHB1dFR5cGU9YW1w?oc=5
2019-11-25 13:22:00Z
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