Bob Quinn explains why Detroit Lions hired OC Darrell Bevell

The Detroit Lions have been weirdly quiet since making the important hire of offensive coordinator Darrell Bevell. No introductory press conference. No official statement from head coach Matt Patricia, general manager Bob Quinn or team owner Martha Ford. Hell, I didn’t even see a single tweet from a player acknowledging the hire.

But this week at the Senior Bowl Bob Quinn finally broke the silence during an interview with SiriusXM down in Alabama:

“He came in and had a great interview with our staff, myself and coach (Patricia),” Quinn said. “Really, he’s a guy that brings a lot of different packages. He really does a good job of taking the personnel that he has—whether that season or that week—and tailoring it to what we’re going to do.”

Those are the exact qualities both Quinn and Patricia have mentioned as important to the team’s offensive development. We saw the duo fully commit to improving the running game in 2018—taking the team from last in the NFL (by yardage) to 23rd in one season. However, their scoring offense actually took a step back in 2018, averaging just 20.2 points per game after tallying 25.6 last year.

And while both Patricia and Quinn have continued to stress the importance of running the ball even better next year, it was Bevell’s ability to excel at both coordinating a pass and run game that made him the most desirable candidate.

“He’s been in a couple different offenses,” Quinn said. “He threw the ball around a lot in Green Bay early in his career. Had kind of a run-based attack in Minnesota and Seattle. He can do some west-coast stuff, he can do a ground-and-pound. It’s going to be a little mix of everything.”

It’s not a ton of information from the Lions GM, but it’s about all we can expect from a very secretive franchise. It confirms a lot of the things we already believed about the future of this offense—most of all, their commitment to be balanced.