I heard we might get a soccer team. I would rather watch soccer than last nights abomination.

I’d be first in line for MLS season tickets.

Lmaoooo that game and this organization

The media hot takes are extra zesty this week. I especially enjoy the Patricia sucks ones, the guy has coached one game.

The Lions just got blown out, at home, by the Jets, a team that is lead by a rookie QB who wasn't even that good in college. It's over bro. Sometimes N=1 is enough.

Have to agree with ILP even though I wanted MP to be the savior. Guy looks lost out there.

Stafford also obviously washed up?

(answer: lol of course not, chillax bros, the big issues are exactly what they thought they were and we weren't let off the hook)

I've talked about this before. We'll never know how good Stafford is for the same reason we'd never know how good Joe Montana or Tom Brady are if they played for the Lions.

Not trying to imply Stafford is the goat, but if the goat spent his whole career on the Lions, he'd probably have the same kinda stats/career arc as Stafford.

True, the bigger story is the Lions are still the Lions.

Bill Belichick went 6-10 his first year as a head coach.

Bill Parcells went 3-12-1 his first year.

Chuck Noll went 1-13 his first year.

Patricia was just handed the keys to the Titanic. Maybe he gets it turned around, maybe it's seconds away from a big ass iceberg. But to give up after ONE GAME is pathetic by any measure.

I don't even care that much about the Lions or the NFL in general but seriously, **** off.

So after a few days processing what happened, my conclusion is basically this is the same mediocre team it's been for the last 7 years. I thin the Jets are going to end the season a pretty decent team, and the Lions still end up somewhere between 5-11 & 9-7.

To me the biggest concern on the team is Bob Quinn. It's now his roster. He's responsible for either drafting, signing, or re-signing just about everyone on this team. Without doing any research, I think Ameer Abdullah and Golden Tate might be the only two contracts he didn't ink, and I'd parlay both of them not being on the roster next year. There's a severe lack of talent, and whatever "system" he is trying to build here doesn't seem to be taking. As far as I'm concerned he's got this season and next to make something happen, or he's gotta go. He tied his fate to Patricia when he fired the most successful coach in franchise history (not really a Caldwell compliment, but a fact of how garbage this team has been) and brought in his boy for his first head coaching job. My hope is that Martha also agrees that 9-7 isn't good enough, and doesn't let this Bob Quinn era go on too long.

In short, I think we need a new thread title. Not sure what yet.

It's the Lions bro. Every sane person I know gave up on them decades ago. But seriously that ONE GAME was maybe the most pathetic Lions outing I have ever seen which is saying something. The ****ing Jets bro. At home. With a rookie QB that looks like, and is destined to be, a pure ****ing loser in this league. That's who they lost to. That's who shat all over the LoLions. At home. There's no turning back from that. Patricia is not the answer. That much is clear now. But the thing is, everyone already knew that cuz there is one and only one possible answer: new ownership.

I don't really think you can fault anything Martha has done as owner. Yeah, WCF sr. was a terrible owner, with a reputation for making bad hires and then leaving them in place well after everyone else figured out they were garbage. Martha cleaned house when it was clear the team was not on a good course, hired an up and coming front office director from the most successful franchise as a GM, and has remained hands off.

So while WCF may have been a sub-par owner and part of the reason why this franchise has been a bottom dweller for so long, Martha is doing everything you want an owner to do. She hired a GM, and then got out of the way. I think you sort of have to give a GM a 4 year or so window as long as the team isn't consistently hitting double digit losses. We're in year 3 of the Quinn era now. The trajectory is not good. I'm willing to stomach a bit of a backslide this year, even though we shouldn't have to. But I would say a playoff appearance next year is mandatory or it's hot seat and/or firing time.

I can't argue with any of this. I've always just assumed this organization is not really interested in winning. IOW I think there's more than incompetence going on. That said, even in the WCF years I would never strongly argue this case because I recognize I can't really prove my claim (I mean how the **** can one prove something like that?). It's just one of those things I would go to my deathbed believing. I've probably carried this assumption too far post-WCF. I agree that the decisions made under Martha do seem consistent with a team trying to win. If they don't work out those are the breaks. The GM hire, and even the Fatricia hire make sense to me. Even if Patricia truly is "in over his head"--which I think he is as I've never seen a more compelling N=1 case in my entire sports lifetime--it was still a reasonable hire at the time.

So yeah you make fair points. I'll try to shut up now or at least for a few weeks.

so does the nfc north suck or not? im legit confused.

**** YEAH BITCHES LET'S GO

Ya that was dope but Patricia's game management is just as bad if not worse than Caldwell's. With how much we dominated both sides 23 points is pretty weak.

KERRYON MY WAYWARD JOHN

In the first quarter. In a game where we assumed the pats would score 30


Nice FG from 4th and inches from the 20


aside from that. Feels good to completely dominate a team for a whole game


Anyone else get the Barry vibe on that first or second run from KJ where he was dancing around fools.

On game management

Lions got up 10-0


2nd quarter. Stafford ran play clock to 0 every f play. It was beautiful.

If atl did that they would be SB champs

This +1000. It makes sooo much difference in your chance to win and it drives me bananas when teams get it wrong. (I'd have lit myself on fire if I was an ATL fan during the SB.)

Meanwhile BB kind of gave up at the end, right? I was eagerly cheering each 15 yard run that also ran 22 seconds off the clock, until they didn't even have time to try a hail-mary/onside/hail-mary.

It's very possible they were aware that the Pats offense wasn't ****, and that points in this game were going to be valuable. I'm not entirely excusing it, as I think it's the wrong call regardless of how low scoring you think the game is going to be, but as far as clock management screw ups go, this franchise has seen a lot worse.

They took care of business well against an inferior opponent, so I have more faith this is now a .500 team that could maybe squeak their way into the playoffs in this bizarre division.

The Stafford game management was a thing of beauty, something I'm glad to see him back to doing. What's more impressive is I don't think we saw a single false start on the line despite him doing a lot of maneuvering on the line and hard counts. The O-Line was pretty fun to watch. Ragnow is a true mauler. I'm willing to give him some time to tweak his pass pro skills if he can keep moving his guy back 2 or 3 yards like that.

I know the rebuttal to this is probably some version of "det v ne is not 'league average'" - Must expect to have to score a lot to beat NE - etc etc.

But Expected Points (EP) for a first down on the 20 yard line is ~3.5. Assume a kicker hits a 40 yarder 90% of the time the FG is 2.7. Break even can be estimated,

2.7 = 3.5x
x = .77

If you convert > .77 going for a conversion is + EP and < .77 going is - EP. There are a lot of confounding factors like if they get a first down all the way down to the 10 etc, but back of the envelope I don't think a kick there is bad.

EP Source

Interesting stuff!

(I wonder how much an aggressive coach's EP improve compared to far-too-conservative league historical average. If a GT-optimal coach gets up towards 4 EP for 1st and 20, then your x moves towards 66% and it probably starts getting closer to a clear "go for it".)

This is a good point. You could probably run a bunch of simulations to see how the EP changes if you increase/decrease some "agressiveness" metrics. My guess is that it won't be very much because I think 4th and short decisions come up so rarely that historical averages are probably pretty good - but I could be wrong.

If anyone works for an NFL team and wants to hire me to do this sort of thing PM me