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

ALLEN PARK -- They're hovering around .500. They're nipping at the heels of the division lead. They're very much in the NFC wild-card picture.

We're talking, of course, about the Philadelphia Eagles.

At 4-4, they've got a lot of work to do. But they believe in themselves, that much is clear, after their trade for Golden Tate.

The Lions, meanwhile, obviously don't.

It's impossible to come to any other conclusion after they traded away their leading receiver for a third-round pick.

At 3-4, the Lions have a comparable record to the Eagles. They're actually in better shape in their division, too, sitting just one game back in the NFC North. And they have two games in the next four weeks against the first-place Bears. Who, at 4-3, look beatable.

The Vikings haven't been nearly as good as expected, nor have the Packers -- and Detroit already has a win in hand against them.

This division is wide open. The Lions haven't won it in 25 years, either. But instead of gunning for it, they trade away their No. 1 receiver?

As safety Quandre Diggs said on Twitter: "WTF?"

It won't make a lot of sense to players who thought they were playing for something in 2018, but there is a long-term payoff. The Lions added a third-round pick to their draft war chest, which is a nice return for a 30-year-old receiver with nine games left on his contract.

But Quinn said he fired Jim Caldwell because he believed the Lions were better than the nine games they won each of the last two years. He said this wasn't a rebuild, either, and that Matt Patricia could win right away.

"Going into camp, starting today, we feel good about our personnel," Quinn told WJR over the summer. "We feel like we can compete with any team in the league and we're really excited about it."

Now here he is, sitting one game out of first place heading into a Week 9 game Minnesota, and he trades away Golden Tate? That can't be interpreted as anything other than tacit acknowledgement that even Detroit's general manager believes this club is going nowhere.

"I don't understand it," Darius Slay's wife, Jennifer, said on Twitter. And I can guarantee you there are a lot of players who are saying the same thing today.

Marvin Jones and Kenny Golladay will help soften the loss. They've both had big games this year and are capable of shouldering expanded workloads. Kerryon Johnson is a bright young star in the backfield, too. But losing Tate is still a serious hit in the slot, and there's no getting around that either.

Since putting pen to paper with Detroit in 2014, there isn't a receiver in the game who has broken more tackles or gained more yards after contact than Tate. He racked up at least 90 catches in all four of his seasons here. The only player to match that league wide: Antonio Brown.

He was Matthew Stafford's favorite target for four-plus straight seasons, and that was especially true in crunch time. The Lions love to talk about Stafford's comebacks, and nobody has caught more big passes in those comebacks than Tate over the years.

Without him, the Lions have to turn to some combination of TJ Jones and Brandon Powell in the slot. They combine for three catches this year, and 48 for their career.

This trade might be a good thing in the long term. But this year, it's clear which of these teams thinks they can compete. And it ain't the Lions.