Matt Patricia is new to being a head coach, but he’s already developed a veteran’s perspective on the preseason.
The Lions are 1-2 (and more importantly, they’ve played rather poorly), but that doesn’t worry the rookie head coach all that much.
“I would say you could probably go back and check what the records were last year in preseason for some of the teams and see where they finished,” Patricia said, via Dave Birkett of the Detroit Free Press. “So, I think it’s a process. I think that’s what we’re trying to figure out. And how long that process takes, I’m not going to put an answer on that because we’re trying to really just get the best guys we can for the long term to improve.”
Of course, there’s one particular team he had in mind, the one he used to work for. The Patriots were 1-3 during the exhibition season, but somehow managed to overcome that to make the Super Bowl. Three other playoff teams had losing records in the preseason, the annual reminder the scores don’t really matter in August.
But the Lions have been a little sloppy, so Patricia had to say something to calm the masses.
“I think our fans are, I think they totally understand that this is a hard-working team, and this is a hard-working area, and this is definitely something that is a process,” Patricia said. “And we’re going through that process right now. We’re trying to evaluate the team, we’re trying to put a good team together, and hopefully that whatever the team looks like now in the preseason, it’ll look better in September. And hopefully it’ll look better in October than it did in September. So, I think there’s definitely a flow to this. I would say that’s a little bit normal.”
It definitely needs to look better than it has in August, but Patricia knows that’s something that’s very possible.
