The Lions are a failed regime, with little-to-no confidence in head coach Matt Patricia and reviews for general manager Bob Quinn all over the map. Depending on how you spin it, Quinn is on his second coach, which is usually the end of the leash for a general manager in the NFL. Quinn elected to keep Jim Caldwell when he was first hired, but it was a move many perceived as due to pressure from owner Martha Firestone Ford.
As it stands now, Patricia and Quinn are tied together with matching contracts, and it’s no secret that Quinn hired Patricia as “his guy.”
I spent a lot of time thinking about this before writing this piece, but the more I think about it the more clear it comes that Quinn has to go.
Objectively, Quinn has done a decent job as a GM. Aside from Jesse James, Quinn hasn’t had any huge whiffs in free agency, and he has orchestrated some good deals, such as Matthew Stafford’s $27 million/year contract. Quinn has found some good draft and UDFA gems such as Joe Dahl, Kenny Golladay, Graham Glasgow, Tracy Walker, Jack Fox, and more. However, Quinn has equally whiffed on many of those as we saw with Glasgow driven out of town, Walker on his way, and Golladay’s future up in the air.
At the end of the day it boils down to this, idea propagated on twitter (by Scott Warheit of Lions Wire if I recall correctly, so credit where it is due): if you gave Bob Quinn a blank slate when he was hired and asked him to draw his dream scenario, it’s this team. It’s Matt Patricia at the helm. It’s a 90s-style defense built on stopping the run first. It’s a team that tries to establish a power running game. Yet, somehow, the Lions coincidentally suck at both of those things.
This was Quinn’s vision. If he failed at this, I don’t trust him to rebuild the team into a mold that he has less faith in.
