ALLEN PARK -- The Detroit Lions have spent the last two years offloading players they believed were not fits for the new regime, schematically as well as culturally. Glover Quin was one of those players.

Now with Detroit mired in a five-game losing streak that has mathematically eliminated them from the playoffs, he’s speaking out.

“Right now, they’re struggling,” the longtime safety and former Lions captain said during an appearance on the Pat McAfee Show. “It’s not a great situation and it’s not a situation where I don’t know if they can fight out of it right now because I don’t know if the love and the like for Patricia’s style makes the players want to fight out of it."

Patricia has struggled with the buy-in since landing in Detroit last year. He brought the Patriot Way with him, and it was a sharp departure from the more hands-off days of Jim Caldwell. He was hard on the players and hosted a difficult training camp last year, as he tried to instill more discipline and better fundamentals. Some players were on board, others less so, and the complaints grew louder once Detroit opened the season with a 31-point loss to the New York Jets.

The Lions won just six games last year, a spectacular fall for a team that said 9-7 was no longer good enough.

So the Lions spent last offseason continuing to turn over the locker room, prioritizing players who would be cultural as well as schematic fits for what Patricia was trying to do. They brought in guys they believed would work hard, many of whom had previous experience working with Patricia. That includes Trey Flowers and Justin Coleman, two of the year’s biggest signings.

But the Lions have been even worse. They’ve lost eight of their last nine games to fall to 3-8-1, and were bounced from the postseason race faster than any other team in the NFC. They have to go 3-1 in the final quarter of the season just to match their win total from 2018, and considering they’re still without Matthew Stafford, that doesn’t seem particularly likely.

“I love those guys out there, man,” Quin said. “I feel bad for them because I know how much they put into it, how much effort they put into it. You know they put so much into it and to have a season basically over like that, it’s so difficult. They’re in a bad spot right now.”

And Quin still questions whether players are buying in enough for them to pull out of the nose dive.

Patricia said he hadn’t seen Quin’s remarks, but defended himself and his players.

“I think our guys fight really hard,” Patricia said. “I think they fight really hard and I don’t think there’s really any question about that whatsoever. I really appreciate this group, I appreciate how hard they work. I think everybody that’s in the building right now knows those guys are engaged, they’re working as hard as they can to get better, and we’re a few plays away from being a lot different right now. But the fact is we have to make those plays, that’s really the bottom line.”

Quin continued to go after his old team on Instagram, where he questioned Detroit’s decision to clear injured running back Kerryon Johnson for practice on Wednesday. Johnson has been on injured reserve with a major knee injury for the second time in as many years.