Detroit Lions: Downward Slide

This season has been a wild ride thus far. Full of ups and downs, and opinions about the team ranging from contending for a playoff spot to contending for the first-overall pick. The firing of head coach Matt Patricia and general manager Bob Quinn certainly indicate this team does not have contending on their mind this season, and I think their play the past few weeks really showed that anyways. More on the firings in a minute.

Since our thrilling victory against the Atlanta Falcons thanks to Todd Gurley’s accidental touchdown, it has been a rough 1-4 stretch, with the one win coming against the spectacularly-named Washington Football Team thanks to Matt Prater’s walk-off field goal. It is also worth noting that the four losses were bad losses. We never really stood a chance against the Colts and the Vikings, and the team played unbelievably bad against the Panthers and the Texans, which were the final two nails in the coffin for Patricia and Quinn.

Another Changing Of The Guard

It just seems like coaching changes are a normal thing to the Lions at this point. Matt Patricia will go down as another terrible coach for this franchise, and he very well may be considered one of the all-time worst. Posting an atrocious record of 13-29-1, there was really no need to see any more from him. There has been an insane amount of response from former players about how terrible he was in the locker room, and if he was really that bad, then I am certainly glad he is gone.

I have a lot more to complain about with Bob Quinn, personally, as I am such a huge fan of the draft. I have very simple criteria for whether or not I like a general manager, and that is that first-and-second-round picks have to be instant contributors that stick around and make major impacts on the team. My other criteria, which goes hand-in-hand with the first one, is do not make stupid picks. Quinn was so inconsistent in the first two rounds that it has set this team back and kept us from contending. I talked about this briefly in my last post about the Lions, but I am going to go a bit more in depth in this one. Here are all of Bob Quinn’s picks from the first and second rounds since we hired him:

2016 – OT Taylor Decker, DT A’Shawn Robinson

2017 – LB Jarrad Davis, CB Teez Tabor

2018 – C Frank Ragnow, RB Kerryon Johnson

2019 – TE T.J. Hockenson, LB Jahlani Tavai

2020 – CB Jeff Okudah, RB D’Andre Swift

I think this can be considered, at best, a mixed bag. The problem is, again, these are their first two picks. You can not miss on these. I think Decker, Ragnow, and Swift can all be considered good picks. I know it is early on Swift, but he has really flashed this season. The thing is, for all those good picks, there are more bad picks in Davis, Tabor, Hockenson, Tavai, and Okudah. From this group, Tabor is by far the worst, as he barely even played at all. Davis has been subpar and likely will not get extended despite playing a bit better this season, Hockenson has not at all played at the level he has to as the 8th overall pick, Tavai looks like a total bust since I have not heard his name in forever, and Okudah (3rd overall pick) is still graded as one of the worst cornerbacks in the entire league. I do not think that bad picks would upset me as much if it genuinely surprised me that they were bad. Davis is actually the exception in this case, because I thought he would be good, but he just does not have the mental game to play in the NFL. It looks like he thinks too much on the field. As for the others, though, there was writing on the wall that they would not work out:

Tabor – Ran a 4.63 40-yard dash. Unacceptably slow for a cornerback.

Hockenson – I have said it before and I will say it again, a tight end is not worth the 8th overall pick. Ever.

Tavai – Big, slow, and draft analysts had him graded as a sixth-round talent. Everyone knew that was a bad pick except for Quinn.

Okudah – Benefited greatly from playing behind the most devastating defensive line in college football, also disappointed with a 4.48 40-yard dash time. Not nearly as bad as Tabor, but still definitely on the slower side.

With Bob Quinn blowing so many draft picks in the first two rounds in just five years, and refusing to draft a quarterback in any capacity since 2017, I was personally even more excited to see him go than Matt Patricia. As far as replacements go, it is too early in the process for me to really have an opinion yet, but definitely expect me to put in my two cents when the time comes. Whoever we bring in, they better be willing to draft a younger quarterback, because I think we really need to start preparing for life without Matthew Stafford, who has continued to play subpar football.

Emerging Cornerback

I so badly wish that this headline was about Okudah, but alas, it is instead about a fifth-round pick of Bob Quinn, Amani Oruwariye, who has begun stealing snaps back from Okudah. Oruwariye has been our best cornerback this season, outplaying Okudah as well as veteran Desmond Trufant, who has not looked good when he has been on the field. Oruwariye has not necessarily been having a special season, but he has shown some real strides, making nice plays in coverage, which is encouraging to see. With how bad our defense has played this season as a whole, I just wanted to quickly highlight one guy that has played pretty well, all things considered.

Pump The Brakes

I saw something recently that I was shocked by, but then when I thought about it, I understood. T.J. Hockenson is leading the Pro Bowl vote for the NFC at tight end. My first thought was, “That can’t be right,” but it is. Simply put, it is because George Kittle and Zach Ertz have been injured, and every other tight end of relevance is in the AFC. While it may be exciting to see Hockenson leading the vote, at least for now, it is not really indicative of his play. While he has not completely fallen off the face of the planet like he did last season prior to getting hurt, he still has not been all that incredible. His numbers are solid (45 catches, 530 yards, 5 touchdowns), but still unspectacular. He has yet to top 100 yards in a game, and has never scored more than one touchdown in a game. While it is cool to see a Lions player leading the Pro Bowl vote at his position, especially a young player, Hockenson is still not even close to living up to his draft position.

Wide Receiver Shake-Up

Just recently, the Lions made a surprising move by cutting Marvin Hall. It does not really make a ton of sense to me, because Hall has been our only real deep threat on this team. Sure, other players also catch deep passes, but that was Hall’s niche in our offense. The move was allegedly made in favor of letting younger guys play more. Hall is 27, so he is not exactly an aging veteran. We actually already have two of those in Danny Amendola (35) and newly-signed Mohamed Sanu (31), so I am not sure why we did not cut one of them instead. I mean I am excited to see some more action for Quintez Cephus and maybe even Jamal Agnew, but letting Hall go now is a bit of a head-scratcher for me.

Play Of The Year (so far)

One play will forever be remembered from this season, and I wanted to give a shoutout to the player that made it happen. On Todd Gurley’s aforementioned accidental touchdown, Will Harris jumped on him, and it appeared as though Gurley expected Harris to bring him down, but Harris then let go, and Gurley’s momentum carried him into the end zone. I have no idea if that was how Harris intended that play to go, or if the thought even came into his head to trick Gurley like that, but nonetheless it worked, and it ended with us stealing that game from the Falcons.

Rookie Report

Jeff Okudah – There was a stretch of a few weeks where it looked like Okudah was really making strides, but he has kind of regressed again. Let me also clarify that by “making strides” I mean that he was not getting burnt every other play, because he still has not shown anything to prove he was a good pick. I am sure there are some people out there saying, “Darius Slay was not good right away,” or, “You showed more patience for Oruwariye earlier in this post.” To those things I say this: Slay was a second-round pick, Oruwariye was a fifth-round pick, Okudah was the 3rd overall pick. The expectations are naturally higher for first-round picks than any other round, but TOP 3 PICKS especially are supposed to be cannot-miss players. If you take a player in the top 3, he has to be an instant contributor, and a guy you can build a team around. Okudah has not shown that at all, outside of his ability to tackle a ballcarrier, but that is not what a corner is drafted for at 3rd overall. Okudah was drafted to be a shutdown corner, and he has not only fallen short of that, but he has also not even shown flashes of being capable of becoming that.

D’Andre Swift – Now to do a complete 180, I have loved what I have seen from Swift. In every game where he has been used as a true featured back, he has really shown up. He looks fast, shifty, and packs a surprising amount of power in his relatively small frame. Naturally, because the Lions cannot have nice things, after running wild against Washington, it was reported Swift had a concussion and then he also was listed as having an illness, so he has missed the last two games. Hopefully he returns soon, and we keep feeding him the ball, because he really looks like he can be something special for this team.

Jonah Jackson – It is sometimes hard to rate how an offensive lineman is doing, especially an interior offensive lineman, but Jackson has been very good as a starter. My go-to method for telling how well a lineman is playing is if I do not hear his name. That means he is not committing penalties or giving up sacks, and that is all I ask for. One other thing that has stood out is his run-blocking. He has done a fantastic job opening up holes for Swift and the rest of our running backs.

Quintez Cephus – He was a healthy scratch for a few weeks after his solid start to the season but has started to see some playing time in recent weeks. His numbers have not really been anything noteworthy, only getting two targets per game, but he has continued to show good hands when the ball is thrown his way. As I mentioned before, with Marvin Hall gone now, I expect Cephus to hopefully get more playing time.

John Penisini – This guy continues to surprise. Sixth-round picks do not normally have the kind of impact Penisini has had, but he has really played well for this team up the middle. Again, run-stuffing defensive tackles are not the most exciting, but his name has been called quite a bit the last few weeks in particular. He is really starting to look like a good pick.

Right now, I view this season as playing for draft position. Does that mean I want us to lose out? Of course not, but that is only because the Jets and Jaguars are leading the race for Trevor Lawrence and do not look like they are going to be caught. I also am too much of a fan to root for us to lose games. My only hope at this point is that we see some real steps forward for this team, especially the young guys. I would love it if at the end of this season, guys like Hockenson and Okudah have started to prove my doubts wrong, and we can feel good about the possibilities that next season holds.