Allen Park — Before you can coach the players, you have to coach the coaches.
And if there’s a lesson learned the hard way from Matt Patricia’s debut as an NFL head coach, it probably starts there. A late hire and a harried arrival from New England helped lay the groundwork for a regular season that exposed all sorts of cracks in the foundation here in Detroit.
But that’s not going to be an excuse this time around. Especially on the defensive side of the ball, where so much of the Lions’ optimism for a 2019 turnaround is rooted.