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It really hasn’t been a great couple of months for anyone in sports — given the suspension of all events due to the pandemic — but one guy who might win the “Biggest Loser Award” would be Detroit Lions head coach Matt Patricia. That may sound harsh AF, but, sheesh, the amount of crap piled on the bearded man is longer than the growing list of people counting down the seconds till ESPN’s The Last Dance releases; which is to say, a lot.
With Patricia having gone 9-22-1 in his two seasons at the helm in Detroit thus far, time’s ticking on when he might actually turn things around. The team has the No. 3 overall pick in the 2020 NFL Draft, an aging quarterback, and a fanbase starved for any hope whatsoever that they aren’t the same old Lions.
Unfortunately, just when the draft might bring some optimism to Lions fans, yet another one of Matt Patricia’s former players has come out and just verbally abused the head coach, going in on how Patricia’s responsible for tearing down team resolve and the once-budding culture. That guy? Glover Quin, who had this to say to SportsRadio 610 in Houston about what he experienced during his time with Patricia as Detroit’s head coach.
“We were changing the perception for the Detroit Lions, and then all of sudden Matt Patricia comes in and feels like, I gotta change the whole culture,” said Quin. “And we’re like, ‘You don’t have to change the culture. The culture is good. They just maybe want you to get us over the hump.’
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“Coach Patricia came in and tore it all down and a lot of the guys didn’t really want to buy into what he was teaching because of the way he presented it. His attitude, his persona, his arrogance, things like that made people not really want to buy into it. That was the disconnect.”
Say what you want to about Glover Quin’s claims here, but he might have a point if you’re looking strictly at the cold hard facts. As a member of the Lions from 2013-19, Quin was part of a Detroit team with back-to-back 9-7 seasons — which even scored a playoff appearance during the 2016 campaign. Since then, any momentum the organization might have had seems to have vanished.
Quin’s rant about Matt Patricia joins the likes of Darius Slay and one Garrett Hudson, who also talked mad shit about the head coach in the past month — hence the aforementioned “Biggest Loser Award” recognition. With so many players throwing Patricia under the bud, and the continued losing on the field, the guy will be lucky if he lasts more than half a season at this point.