Yet Another Former Detroit Player Drags Matt Patricia for Ruining the Lions with His 'Patriots Attitude'

Source - If the details of Darius Slay's beef with Matt Patricia came as a surprise, Glover Quin wasn't among those caught off guard. Quin knew his former teammate had some things to get off his chest. 

Namely, that Patricia once told Slay in a team meeting to stop "sucking another man’s crank" after Slay posted a picture of a wide receiver on social media. ...

Sure enough, when Slay got word he'd been traded to the Eagles, he called Quin to give him a heads-up.

"He called me the night before the trade broke, he called me (around midnight) and was like, 'I got traded to the Eagles, man. I’m gone, I’m out of there. I can’t wait till tomorrow, man, I’ma let him have it.'..."

Slay didn't hold back. In recalling the incident with Patricia, he told the Free Press "there’s no telling what could have happened" had Quin not been sitting next to him at the time. Quin, the even-keel captain, calmed Slay down before things could escalate. 

In hindsight, Quin sometimes wishes he had let Slay go. ...

He blames Patricia's 'Patriots attitude' for the Lions' regression the past two seasons. Instead of building on the positive culture Jim Caldwell left behind, Quin says Patricia blew it up and tried to start over. Detroit is 9-22-1 since. 

"We were changing the perception for the Detroit Lions, and then all of sudden Matt Patricia comes in and feels like, I gotta change the whole culture," said Quin. "And we’re like, 'You don’t have to change the culture. The culture is good. They just maybe want you to get us over the hump.' ... His attitude, his persona, his arrogance, things like that made people not really want to buy into it. That was the disconnect." 

As more and more guys leave the Lions and a guy like Richard Sherman turns them down to take less money elsewhere because he doesn't much care for their "culture," a couple of things come into focus. One, we get a more accurate measurement of the thousand mile wide chasm between how Matt Patricia is used to doing things and how the Lions have always done them. And two, we understand better why the Lions keep overspending to get players who are used to it. Danny Amendola, Jamie Collins, Duron Harmon and Danny Shelton, just to name four members of the Detroit Patriots. 

It's easy to laugh at anyone defending the "culture" of the franchise with the 10th worst winning percentage in NFL history and one of the short list of teams that haven't taken up one of the 108 Super Bowl slots. And believe me, I have. Like Patricia's first training camp when the Detroit media - the media, mind you - complained that he was treating his players like the "junior varsity" for making them run at practices. Like somehow asking professional athletes to be fast and in shape is violating some federal labor law guaranteeing employees' rights to be slow and fat. 

But the thing is, Darius Slay and Glover Quin are neither slow nor fat. No one would accuse them of having lousy attitudes or being uncoachable, malignant clubhouse tumors. But when Patricia walked in the door, he entered an environment that was the polar opposite of anything he'd ever dealt with before. He came from a world where no one is immune from abuse and the best burger is made from the most sacred cows. And it sounds like he just started operating off the same template from Day One without realizing how big the adjustment would be for these guys. 

I think every comic goes through this early phase where you've got your one monologue and you do it wherever club you get to work and sometimes it works and sometimes you end up eating your own dick. But with experience, you learn to read the room. And adjust your set to the audience. Patricia just started doing the blue material that killed when he was working The Joke Hut in the Chinese restaurant, and tried to apply it to the Little League fundraiser at the Knights of Columbus. And he's bombing. 

So the group that went 36-28 (0-2 in the playoffs) in Jim Caldwell's four years is 9-22-1 and he's bringing his former players in - the ones who appreciate classic dick jokes like "stop sucking another man's crank" and who will play hard him - to finally change the culture to fit his style. And it has to happen fast because the seat he's on is supernova hot and he's all but out of time. At least if things don't turn around in Detroit, there's always a soft landing spot for him back where his genius for insult comedy is appreciated.