ALLEN PARK -- For the weeks that Matthew Stafford has been beaten and battered by an array of sacks, that he's seen as many turnovers as touchdowns and losses of the uncompetitive kind, the Lions quarterback has taken perhaps a bigger beating from so many in the public eye.
His coaches, meanwhile, have sat the debate out.
The Lions operate under a few different codes of secrecy and silence that they've no doubt borrowed from the Patriots. As such, they strayed far away from evaluating Stafford, good or bad, in any kind of public forum. As Matt Patricia spun questions about his quarterback into drawn-out speeches on his team as a whole and as Jim Bob Cooter said the evaluation in "sort of Detroit Lions information," they allowed the narratives about him to mainly be what the critics had to say.