DETROIT – There are so many reasons the Detroit Lions have finally become a Super Bowl contender after decades of misery.
For one, they have a general manager who knows how to identify and draft talent. In four years, Brad Holmes has brought in Penei Sewell, Alim McNeill, Amon-Ra St. Brown, Aidan Hutchinson, Jameson Williams, Jahmyr Gibbs, Sam PaPorta, Brian Branch, Terrion Arnold, and others.
Detroit has also retained its top talent. Sewell, St. Brown, Jared Goff, and Taylor Decker all got massive contract extensions in the offseason.
Oh yeah, and the Lions have a head coach who gets the best out of his players. Dan Campbell doesn’t always play by the book on gameday, but he has his finger on the pulse of this team, and his guys would do anything for him on any given Sunday.
You know who you can’t say that about? The coach Campbell replaced. And that’s what makes Bill Belichick’s recent comments so utterly ridiculous.
Belichick -- who won six Super Bowls with the New England Patriots and is widely regarded as one of the best football coaches ever -- is now a member of the “Let’s Go” podcast with Maxx Crosby, Peter King, and Jim Gray.
But his justification for the strength of the Lions’ offensive line during Monday’s episode bordered on insulting.
“I think that the Lions have built a really good offensive line for their quarterback,” Belichick said. “They couldn’t get a lot of production in the red (zone) last week, but that’s something that Matt Patricia started, and now they’re kind of getting the fruits of the labor from him.”
...what?
The heart of this Lions team is its offensive line, which is anchored by Sewell and Decker at the tackle spots and Frank Ragnow at center. Graham Glasgow and Kevin Zeitler are also very solid guards.
To suggest that Patricia -- one of the most disastrous coaches in team history -- deserves credit for that unit is, uh, certainly an opinion.
Patricia finished in last place in the NFC North all three of his seasons with Detroit, going 13-29-1 before getting canned midway through 2020.
It wasn’t just his record, either. The players infamously hated playing for Patricia -- just ask Darius Slay or Quandre Diggs, two of the rare bright spots from that era.
Jim Caldwell had his faults, but he left Patricia with a roster that went 36-28 over a four-year span, including two playoff appearances and three winning records.
The only players left over from Patricia’s final year are Decker, Ragnow, Jalen Reeves-Maybin, and Dan Skipper. (Glasgow left and returned.)
Patricia spent most of his NFL career as Belichick’s defensive coordinator, so I understand that there’s some loyalty there. But if he’s supposedly providing analysis on the current state of the NFL, we can’t let Belichick get away with a statement like that.
There were no positives from the Patricia era. In fact, it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say the Lions did everything they could to purge the dreadful culture he built.
Holmes, Campbell, and Sheila Ford Hamp resurrected the Lions from the ashes of the Patricia tenure. Detroit won’t forget that.
