Editor’s note: This is an opinion piece from MLive.com reporter Kyle Meinke.

GLENDALE, Ariz. -- To tank or not to tank?

That is the question Detroit Lions fans have been chewing on the last couple weeks, as the club slipped back into the NFC North cellar like a well-worn chair. Sure, their playoffs hopes remain mathematically alive. But only infinitesimally so. They need about 314 different things to happen, all of which starts with winning out. And anyone who has watched Detroit Lions football this season knows how unlikely that is.

Hey, they got the first one though, a 17-3 victory on Sunday against the Arizona Cardinals.

Of course, there was some grousing from the cheap seats by those who want the Lions (5-8) to lose out for draft positioning. Hey, I get it too. If you’re not going to the playoffs, might as well get the best draft pick possible, right? Logically, it makes sense. But practically, less so.

How exactly do you expect professional athletes to give less than 100 percent? Particularly in a game as violent as this?

You can’t do it. Which is why no one does it. Did you see who else won on Sunday? Oakland and San Francisco, and they’re duking it out for the No. 1 overall pick.

“I would be happy with a 3-0 win,” Lions running back LeGarrette Blount said. “I’d be happy with a 2-0 win. Just a win. And at the end of the day, how you win in the NFL doesn’t count. It’s more the Ws than the Ls, not the fashion or style of victory. It was good to get one. Made us feel a lot better, and I hope we can build on this.”

Did you hear that? I hope we can build on this?

That’s the point to remember here. With their chances of making the playoffs only incrementally better than mine, everything the Lions are doing should be about 2019 and beyond. Of course draft position factors into it too, but that’s only one part of the equation. Matt Patricia is also trying to install a system here, and change a culture, and losing 100 straight games hurts that more than anything.

Remember, this whole Patricia experiment got off to a shaky start. He’s a smart guy, but running your own show is considerably different than coordinating defense, and he’s made mistakes. Dose him with truth serum, and dollars to doughnuts he’d tell you the same.

Many players didn’t totally buy in. Not right away. That locker room was leaking like a sieve during training camp. Whether it was the long practices or the extra running or the dumb rules or the unpredictable and ever-changing schedule, or whatever else, there was discontent. A couple players were openly longing for the days of Jim Caldwell. And I think that does help explain why the Lions were so terrible to open the season.

They lost by 31 points on opening night against a rookie quarterback making his NFL debut for a terrible Jets team. A week later, Detroit lost again, this time in San Francisco.

The Jets and 49ers have combined to win just five games since, by the way.

It was an embarrassing debut for the rookie head coach. But there has been some buy-in since, especially on defense. They allowed 78 points against New York and San Francisco to open the season. They’ve allowed 75 points in their last four games combined, two of which were against first-place teams. Hey, that’s better!

The Lions have allowed 18.6 points per game in the last month, down from the 26.6 they allowed in the first two months of the season. Hey, that’s a whole touchdown per game better!

Of course, no one is going to mistake the Arizona Cardinals for the Greatest Show On (crappy) Turf or anything. They’ve got a rookie quarterback playing behind an offensive line that features, count 'em, five backups. Josh Rosen just lost his favorite receiver, too. No one is scoring fewer points, and no one is gaining fewer yards.

This Lions offense is terrible, as you know. But Arizona, somehow, is worse.

Still, give credit where it’s due. The Lions held the Cardinals scoreless until the fourth quarter. Hell, they allowed the Cardinals to cross midfield just twice in the first three quarters.

Last week, the Cardinals ran for 182 yards while scoring 20 points in a win at Green Bay. This week, they ran for just 61 yards while scoring three points in a loss against Detroit.

“Detroit had a good scheme against us,” Cardinals running back David Johnson said.

No kidding. Johnson had just 49 yards rushing, his fewest since Oct. 18. Larry Fitzgerald needed only one catch to set the NFL record for most receptions by a player with a single team, yet needed 39 minutes to get it. And the Lions did all this while playing without top linebacker Devon Kennard, then losing standout rookie defensive tackle Da’Shawn Hand in the first quarter, then losing veteran defensive end Ezekiel Ansah just two plays later.

Darius Slay left the field for a while too, which forced Detroit to roll with a cornerback pairing of undrafted rookie Mike Ford and the recently claimed Michael Cooper Sr. And then Cooper got hurt too.

Yet Arizona didn’t score a single point until Zane Gonzalez booted a 22-yard field goal with 8:18 left.

“We felt pretty good coming into this game,” Rosen said. “We thought it was a good opportunity for us to hit two in a row. And we didn’t. It sucks.”

Of course, Arizona’s offense sucks. But the Lions did what Green Bay couldn’t, and did so without regulars across their defense. And they did it last week, too, against an honest-to-God NFL offense. Los Angeles moved the ball effectively just twice on its first nine drives and was still sitting on 16 points when Matthew Stafford fumbled the football in the fourth quarter. It finished with just 344 total yards, just 5 off its season low.

Don’t look now, but the Lions -- who ranked dead last against the run to open the season -- are now 12th in total defense.

So while this season has certainly been difficult, and the offense has been a profound disappointment, there are signs of progress too, especially on defense. And you can sense players starting to figure out what Patricia is all about.

“I always learned this from Matty P: Everything he does, there’s a method to his madness," said veteran defensive tackle Ricky Jean Francois, who was also with Patricia in New England. "It might not show then, but eventually, it’s going to show. It’s going to come out why he had you doing something. Most people want to figure it out right now. People don’t want to wait. But let’s figure out why he’s making us do this, and then it ends up showing up.”

This is among the reasons you don’t tank. Yes, losing helps the draft positioning, and better draft positioning is always better if you’re not in the playoffs. But winning matters too. Getting better matters. Changing the culture matters. And that’s harder to do when you’re losing out, especially against teams like the Cardinals and Bills, because it would also sow further distrust in Patricia.

Instead, Detroit came into Arizona down Marvin Jones, and Kerryon Johnson, and TJ Lang, and Golden Tate, and Devon Kennard, then lost an even dozen players in the game, and still didn’t allow a point for 54 minutes. Players see that, they see what happened last week, and they begin to trust the process.

And that matters, too.