Detroit Lions Still Have a Long Way to Go Before Respectability
Even though they’re only 2-9, the sense was that the Detroit Lions were still a pretty decent team and not the push-over they’ve been in recent years. While that might be true, the fact remains that the Lions still don’t present even a mediocre team much of a challenge.
They showed against the New England Patriots that they have the talent to win a lot of games, but they just don’t have the will and clearly don’t know how to win.
Even with a 14-3 lead, anyone watching never really got the sense the Lions would be able to pull out a win despite their first-half dominance. And anyone watching was right.
Poor tackling, poor effort, and four Tom Brady touchdowns later, the Lions looked like teams of the past and wound up getting blown out 45-24.
Until Jim Schwartz (or perhaps another coach) can teach these guys how to win, this is what we’re going to continue to see. A head coach is there to develop players first, but he should also instill an attitude into a team. Winning should be the only option. Just the thought of losing should make a team sick to their stomach.
Rex Ryan gave that to the Jets, Mike Smith gave that to the Atlanta Falcons, Jon Harbaugh gave that to the Baltimore Ravens, but Schwartz has not given that to the Lions. Or, at least not yet.
While I don’t think Schwartz has done a good enough job to this point of changing the culture in Detroit, he has at least made some progress which is certainly a good enough reason to keep him around.
It might just be a matter of some more house-cleaning after Lions players started calling each other out and going so far as to say some of their teammates quit at the end and are “essentially just collecting a paycheck.”
The team knows which guys are guilty of that, and Schwartz knows it. That means we should see some guys getting tossed onto the bench in the coming weeks or just right out onto the street. Those aren’t guys a head coach can keep around.
Names weren’t mentioned, but it’s easy to keep watch and see what Schwartz does. If his starting lineup is the same next week, then it might be time to start looking for a new coach. No good coach is going to keep guys that aren’t doing all they can to make sure their team wins on the field.
If guys start hitting the bench, then it’s safe to assume those are the guys being called out by their own teammates and their might be hope for Schwartz to instill a personality into this team after all.
But Schwartz must do something. It’s clear that what he’s doing right now isn’t good enough, and his chances to get this team on the right track are disappearing quickly. And in today’s NFL, he’s lucky they’re not already gone.