Sunday open thread: How worried are you about the Detroit Lions’ preseason performance?

Look, we need to just admit it. The Detroit Lions have not been easy to watch this preseason. They’ve been outright bad. Their starting quarterback hasn’t produced a touchdown in eight drives. The defense has been worked over by the likes of Davis Webb, Connor Cook and Ryan Griffin.

The players supposed to take big leaps this year—namely the entire 2017 draft class—has underperformed and underwhelmed.

Of course, this is the preseason, where the gameplans are made up and the points don’t matter. An optimist could look at how the Lions have played and throw everything out of the window. A pessimist would look at the disastrous play of the Lions and conclude they’ll be one of the worst teams in the league this year.

There are things from the preseason that don’t matter: The final score, for one. Preseason record has no correlation to regular season record, so there’s no cause for concern with Detroit’s 1-2 record thus far. But individual performances and struggles shouldn’t be completely overlooked simply because it’s the preseason.

So keeping that all in mind, today’s Question of the Day is:

How worried are you about the Lions after their performance through three preseason games?

My answer: 4/10

I’d be lying if I said my confidence wasn’t a little shaken after Friday’s game, but here’s the thing: Nothing about what I saw really surprised me. I knew the defense was going to struggle this year—especially early on. I knew the running game wasn’t going to magically become a top 10 unit right away. And I certainly knew the offensive line was going to struggle if T.J. Lang wasn’t in there.

But my concern goes beyond all that. Some of the players I thought the Lions would be relying upon heavily in 2018 have disappointed the most this preseason. Jarrad Davis, A’Shawn Robinson, Michael Roberts, and Teez Tabor have all been hugely disappointing throughout camp and preseason, and I can’t just ignore it because it’s not the regular season yet. The problems we’re seeing are consistent with what we’ve seen, which means these players are either regressing or stagnant in their development.

All that being said, I’m not going to panic about the 2018 season. People tend to think all of the development and growth from a team happens in the offseason, but in reality, a team typically looks a lot different in August than they do in December. Growth happens every week in the NFL and it will be Matt Patricia’s job to make sure this team is learning and getting better every week.

Things may be ugly early, but that doesn’t mean they’ll be ugly late. And for that reason, I’m not quite yet hitting any sort of panic button.