On Friday night, in their second preseason game, the Detroit Lions fell 30-17 to the New York Giants. Anyone who knows football realizes that the score does not really matter so much in a glorified scrimmage but those who watched the game closely did not come away too impressed.
One person who was certainly not thrilled with the performance was head coach Matt Patricia. Following the contest, Patricia was unable to think of anything specific that went well and said he would have to watch the film to find something. Well, Patricia was able to review the film and by golly, he was able to find some positives.
“Film is always funny. Sometimes it’s never as bad and sometimes it’s never as good as you think,” Patricia said.
“I thought the operation obviously of some of the drives that we had offensively were pretty good from the standpoint of communication and getting the ball moving there, especially late in the game. We definitely had a drive in the game where I felt we ran the ball downhill well. … I thought we made some good adjustments up front to try to get some of the pressures picked up.
“Same thing defensively. I thought there were some good situations that came up early in the game defensively, some critical down-and-distance situations that we actually played pretty well. And then there were some that were not played well.”
My personal opinion is that unless a player is injured, what happens in a preseason game has very little to do with what will happen when the games really count. That being said, like coach Patricia said after the game, he needs to improve and the team as a whole needs to improve before the season begins. That challenge begins now.
