I’ve covered the Detroit Lions for nine seasons now at the Free Press. This is the least encouraging preseason I’ve ever seen.
I don’t know what that means for the regular season. These are exhibition games, after all, so they don’t count for anything and barely matter, and first-year Lions coach Matt Patricia has been clear about his intentions: To work on fundamentals and put players in specific situations where he can evaluate them doing different things.
But that doesn’t change the fact the Lions have been bad this preseason.
How bad? In the first 28 minutes of Thursday’s preseason finale against the Cleveland Browns, they had two first downs, and both came on penalty.