Another branch of the Belichick tree has fallen
What was the Matt Patricia era in Detroit anyway? Also, Week 13 picks and a plea for less annoying running apps.
Remembering the Matt Patricia era in Detroit
Jim Caldwell went 36-28 in four seasons as head coach of the Detroit Lions. His .536 win percentage was higher than any full-time coach the franchise had employed since 1956. His two playoff appearances were double the amount every other Lions coach had made this millennium.
And yet, this was not enough for Lions leadership. Caldwell was fired in 2018 and replaced by Matt Patricia, a Duluth Trading Company commercial that gained sentience and worked its way up the Patriots’ coaching ranks to head up Bill Belichick’s defense.
This was not a good decision. In two-plus seasons, Patricia won 13 games and lost 29 (he also notched a tie against the Cardinals in a game Detroit led 24-6 with under 12 minutes to play). Ownership gave him a 2020 do-over after he’d lost starting quarterback Matthew Stafford to injury for the bulk of 2019, then watched as he squandered this opportunity on a weekly basis. That included a Week 1 loss to the Bears in which he flushed a 23-6 lead against Mitchell Trubisky.
This was all, somehow, tolerable! The Lions occasionally played up to their potential to give their fans glimmers of hope. They were 3-3 heading into November and, if not hopeful, at least not a total shitshow.
Then Thanksgiving came. So did the shitshow.
Detroit turned a 14-13 lead into a 41-17 deficit on its holiest of gamedays against a 3-7 Texans team helmed by another former Patriots-assistant-turned-failed-head-coach, Romeo Crennel. Patricia and general manager Bob Quinn were fired two days later. Current and former players from the regime celebrated.
But we are not here to bury the Lions’ latest awful coaching decision. Plenty of other places have done that already. Instead, let’s look at all the good he brought to the world in two-plus years as Detroit’s head coach.
He made the Patriots better (by leaving)
New England’s defensive ranking, by weighted DVOA, in his final three seasons in New England:
16th
6th
23rd
New England’s defensive ranking, by DVOA, in the two full seasons following his departure:
13th
3rd
He got the hell out of Kenny Golladay’s way
Detroit’s player record in the Patricia/Quinn era is … not great. The Lions haven’t had a single player drafted from 2018-on make a Pro Bowl. The team outlaid more than $315 million in contracts to lure players to Michigan; this math works out to roughly $24 million per win.
But there is balm in Gilead. Kenny Golladay developed from high school recruit only South Dakota wanted to a true NFL WR1. The former third-round pick had his first 1,000-yard season in Patricia’s debut year. He led the league in touchdown catches last fall (11) despite having players like Jeff Driskel and David Blough take turns behind center. In the four games he’s been fully healthy for in 2020, he’s put together an 80-reception, 1,350-yard, eight-touchdown pace.
He’ll be one of the most sought-after free agents of 2021, so there’s a chance he follows Patricia out of Detroit. The Lions should not let this happen, but they also should not have made pretty much any of the moves they’ve made the past three years. I look forward to watching future New York Jet Golladay catch passes from Trevor Lawrence.
He went 2-3 against the Packers
Alright, we’re taking moral victories where we can get them now.
He beat the shit out of the Patriots that one time
Look at this box score! This was an abject domination over a team that went on to win the Super Bowl!
Detroit went 6-10 that season.
End of list
Annnnnd … that’s all I’ve got. Cool career, Matt Patricia. You did great. — CD
Week 13 Picks!
Week 12 came to a conclusion only two days later than expected thanks to the showdown between a JV Ravens squad and a Steeler team not yet ready to compete with the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree for primetime slotting. That capped off a solid week of picks for us, as we’d all assumed Pittsburgh would be able to handle a disease-ravaged opponent to improve to 11-0 (not that they didn’t make it closer than necessary).
This week’s picks offer up several more lopsided-looking games like Broncos-Chiefs, Eagles-Packers, and any team in the NFL versus the Jets. And, because we care about you, the reader, we’ve lined up another All-Star guest picker for Week 13.
Emerson Lotzia Jr. is the hit sequel to the acclaimed Emerson Lotzia Sr. He’s host of NESN After Hours, a late-night sports talk extravaganza from the world’s finest regional sports network. He’s also a key cog in the Draft Kings broadcast machine as a host, interviewer, and occasional play-by-play man when it comes to Madden broadcasts (you can play free AND listen to Emerson and me talk about beer and cereal while vaguely addressing the game over on DK’s Twitch channel).
Like fellow guest picker Richard Johnson before him, he staunchly believes the Jacksonville Jaguars are America’s team. He once did a group project with Matt Prater and got an A quadruple-plus. Boston Police have politely requested he no longer wear shorts, as his quads are a distraction to “drivers of both sexes.”
I asked Emerson to explain as much or as little of his picks as he’d like, and this is what he sent me. All caps, of course, because that’s how he lives his life.
Well alright. You can follow him at @emersonlotzia on Twitter, where you will see plenty of extremely well-done interviews paired with pictures of his springer spaniel on a 1:1 basis. — CD
The “they’ve got to lose at some point, right?” game: Washington vs. Steelers
The Steelers are the 13th team in the Super Bowl era to jump out to an 11-0 start. Just two of those teams, the 1972 Dolphins and 2007 Patriots, finished the regular season with an unblemished record, and only for the Patriots did that equal a 16-0 record. (Of course, only the Dolphins stayed perfect all the way through the Super Bowl, as Mercury Morris always reminds us.)
History is not on the undefeated Steelers’ side here. They’re due for a loss anyway, considering more than half of their wins have been by a touchdown or less. That includes their most recent outing when they played at, in Mike Tomlin’s own words, a junior varsity level against the Ravens’ actual junior varsity-level squad. Five days after that re-rescheduled game, they’ll have to face a maybe-rising Washington Football Team, which will be nice and rested after a rare Thanksgiving victory over the Cowboys.
This matchup doesn’t seem like it’ll produce many fireworks: two top-five defenses vs. two average offenses led by quarterbacks in their late 30s. Yet, it could end up creating the biggest headline of Week 13, if Washington hands Pittsburgh its first loss of the season. I think it could happen ... then again, my newfound appreciation for the WFT could be clouding my judgment. — SH
The “they’ve got to win again at some point, right?” game: Lions vs. Bears
The AFC is home to the longest losing streaks in the NFL right now: the Jets (11 straight) and the Jaguars (10 straight). The scene isn’t quite as tragic in the NFC, where the worst slump currently belongs to the Bears, who are sitting at five consecutive losses.
Although Matt Nagy’s team is favored at home Sunday, the Lions might be a popular upset pick. Not only should they have beaten the Bears back in Week 1, but now that they’re living that post-Patricia life, we should expect them to play with an extra spring in their step. And if the defense throws any kind of surprises at Mitchell Trubisky, then the Bears are in trouble.
But the Lions are pretty banged up, and even free from Patricia’s reign of terror, are still the Lions. I was roasted by my own mother for picking the Lions over the Bears in the first week of the season:
And I’m not about to let it happen a second time. — SH
The “F U Matt Patricia” game: Lions vs. Bears
This sure looks like an easy week for the Bears to snap their five-game losing skid, a home date with a struggling Lions team. And that’s certainly the most logical pick, which two of our panelists are buying. Me, I’m going with the Lions here because, damn, it has to feel good to be unshackled from a guy like Patricia.
There’s some logic to this too. Since 2003, teams firing their coach during the season were 14-16 in the game after that. Sure, that’s a sub-.500, but it’s an improvement on their overall records had they kept the same bum on the sideline. The other two teams to fire their coaches this year, Atlanta and Houston, both won the week after handing out pink slips (more notably, both of those teams have shown significant improvement overall, but that’s not usually the norm).
Three-for-three on post firing wins is probably too much to ask for in this garbage year, but I’m feelin’ some good karma here. — RVB
The “I believe in Andy Dalton” game: Cowboys vs Ravens
This game is kind of a nightmare to pick because of Baltimore’s flagrant disregard for COVID protocols, which is matched only by the NFL’s complete inability to get something right on player safety. We still don’t know whether or not Lamar Jackson will play in this one, which makes it really hard to pick. And even though the Ravens aren’t getting quite as shafted out of all this as the Steelers are, their COVID callups are still a step down from the usual starters.
So as logical as it would be to pick the Cowboys because of that, I’m picking them because I want to spend an inordinate amount of time this offseason talking about Andy Dalton’s future in the NFL. Let him play just well enough in relief work this season to tempt the tastes of NFL front offices addicted to not-good dink-and-dunk quarterbacks. A couple more wins with Dalton under center, and there’s a decent chance someone is going to sign him to be their starter (hi, Jacksonville). — RVB
A simple plea for better running apps
This is a blog about running. No, it is not entry number 4,567,038 in the “running saved my life” genre (though I can credit it with at least countering crushing self-doubt and bouts of despair that seem to be far more frequent without a full-time job). This is actually a practical plea for more realistic running apps, and perhaps you can help me with this cause.
I’ve been putting one foot in front of the other with some speed regularly for about two years now. But only recently I’ve gotten serious about wanting to get faster and race, as opposed to just using it as an excuse to listen to podcasts and not die before I reach 55. To this end, I started an actual training program through a popular shoe company’s phone app, and I mostly use it because it has a package of speed runs and a voice that tells me when to speed up and slow down, etc. The thing that grates on me about these otherwise useful programs are the voices of the coaches.
“Hey, look at you, you’re doing great!”
“You should feel good because you are good at this!”
And it never stops, on and on with positive encouragement. But what if I don’t want that kind of chatter pumping me up and trying to make me feel good? Not all of us respond to positive reinforcement, or at least not that kind.
I need a couple different versions. One, is a simple voice telling me that it’s time for a five-minute interval at TK pace.
Next, how about some negative reinforcement. “If you can’t do this next three minute interval at TK pace, my god, we will all know what a loser you are. No wonder you don’t have a job anymore.” I thought too about one that would mess with my own body image issues, but that’s probably a little too much even for me. But on the flip side, an app that told me when I had burned enough calories to balance out a bacon cheeseburger would be kind of nice (though I know all too well exercise doesn't translate into a 1:1 calorie burning effect, believe me).
For now, I’ll have to settle for these annoying inspirational voices. It is at least better than just using my watch to time off intervals; I tend to cheat when I do that for some reason.
Okay, that’s my running blog. Now, “go out there and give it your best! You got this! You’re running strong because YOU ARE strong, you idiot!” — RVB