Opinion: Detroit Lions fans should boycott Thanksgiving game to send message

Jeff Seidel | Detroit Free Press

Show Caption Hide Caption Detroit Lions going backward, lose to awful Washington. What's future? Lions lose to a horrible Washington team starting a rookie QB. What does it mean for Matt Patricia and future of this regime? Filmed Nov. 24, 2019.

LANDOVER, Md. — You can blame Detroit Lions owner Martha Ford all you want. And you wouldn't be wrong.

That seems like a logical place to start after the Lions hit a new low on Sunday when they lost to lowly Washington, 19-16 –— one of the worst teams in the NFL.

Ford deserves blame because she hired general manager Bob Quinn, who hired Matt Patricia, who is presiding over a team that has lost seven of its last eight games, including four in a row. It’s like a twisted game called: "Dominoes of Mediocrity." One bad move creates the next bad move, and so on, and so on, and those dominoes start to fall, clanking against one another, spilling across the floor.

And you can blame Quinn for that. He was the one who put this band of misfit toys together. It’s not even Thanksgiving, but the Lions are 3-7-1 and the season is over.

This team is bad and getting worse.

And you can blame Patricia for that. He has given no reason why he should keep his job, compiling a 9-17-1 record as head coach. We have seen no progress, just regression. We have seen no reason for hope, only disappointment. And he just can’t figure out how to hold a lead and win a close game. At this point, I just don’t see any reason why he would be the coach next year. Or even in December. Or even on Thanksgiving Day, to tell you the truth. At this point, his future seems inevitable. After all, Patricia has as many wins through 27 games as Rod Marinelli and Steve Mariucci did.

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He should be fired. The Patricia experiment hasn't worked. If the Lions win their remaining five games (which isn’t gonna happen), the Lions would still end up with an 8-7-1 record. And remember, 9-7 wasn't good enough when Patricia was hired.

But you deserve blame, too, Lions fans.

You are enabling this.

When you buy your Lions jerseys.

When you fill up the seats and go to the games.

When you buy beer and popcorn in Ford Field, pumping all of that concession money into the Ford family bank account.

Year after year.

When you go to the games, despite the losses, you are sending a message: I accept this.

After this debacle against Washington — the team with the interim head coach — several fans have sent me emails or messages on Twitter, saying they are going boycott the Thanksgiving Day game against the Chicago Bears out of protest.

They envision an empty stadium, with tumbleweed rolling across the turf on national TV, to shame the Lions and send a strong message to Martha Ford: This isn’t acceptable.

And it makes sense.

Why in the world would you want to see this team in person, other than blindly following the tradition of going to this one game?

But some traditions don’t make sense.

Like eating green bean casserole on holidays. In my family, we eat it only because my mother has been making it for decades. But that doesn’t make it any better.

It’s time to break the tradition.

Stay home on Thanksgiving.

Enjoy your holiday.

Lions-free.

“I think that he’s trying his hardest,” Lions guard Graham Glasgow said, about Patricia.

Trying your hardest doesn’t make you a successful coach. And losing close games doesn’t make you a successful coach. Shoot, Jim Caldwell got fired because 9-7 wasn’t good enough.

And having once coached under Bill Belichick doesn’t make you a successful coach, either.

I know the Lions have all kinds of injuries. They were playing without five starters, including Matthew Stafford. They were also missing return man Jamal Agnew (ankle) and defensive lineman Da'Shawn Hand (ankle).

But this is the NFL. Every team has injuries.

And you can’t pin all of this ugliness — losing seven of eight — on Stafford’s absence. The Lions had already lost four of five games when Stafford was still playing. He was playing great and this team was still losing.

And then came Sunday.

This wasn't a fluky loss, or bad officiating, or a goofy play. This was just plain ugly — an exercise in uneven, undesirable, unwatchable football. This was turnovers and penalties and bad plays on special teams — stop me if you have ever heard that before.

“We all know what the mistakes are,” Patricia said. “We all saw them out there and we’ve got to do a better job coaching it and we’ve got to a better job of executing it on the field. For us, that’s kind of where we’re at.”

But he has shown no ability to fix them.

Firing Patricia right now wouldn’t do much to the product on the field, especially on a short week.

I see only one a benefit: It would send a strong message that this isn’t acceptable. And I’m in big favor of that.

Floating along in mediocrity doesn’t cut it anymore.

There is no hope that things are going to get better this season, and I defy you to explain why things might get better next season.

Quinn is in his fourth year. And he has done nothing to prove why he should keep his job, either.

But here’s the sad part:

If Martha Ford fired Quinn and Patricia, I have no confidence she can hire the right person, who would hire the right person to coach this team. I’ve seen that movie too many times. But that shouldn’t stop her from making a move. She should start searching for a new GM right now.

When Martha Ford took over control of the Lions, she talked like things were going to change.

But the longer she keeps Quinn and Patricia, the longer this clown show continues, the more everything stays the same.

Quinn and Patricia are turning into the green bean casserole of the NFL.

And remember, Lions fans: You are playing a role in this as well, when you keep going to the games.

Contact Jeff Seidel: jseidel@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @seideljeff. To read his recent columns, go to freep.com/sports/jeff-seidel.