Saturday open thread: What do the Detroit Lions need to accomplish for 2019 to be successful?

Ask any NFL coach, and they’ll tell you there are two possible outcomes to a season: winning the Super Bowl or failure.

Obviously, that’s what the expectation should be for every team right now. If you aren’t going out there trying to win championships, you’re going to quickly find yourself out of a job.

But we have to be realistic here. The Detroit Lions could very well win the Super Bowl in 2019, but it feels pretty unlikely. And the bar for “success” in Detroit right now is a little lower than most, as the team continues to undergo a drastic culture change.

Even the examples of quick turnarounds in this league tend to be muted in their accomplishments. The Bears may have had a fantastic regular season last year, but they got bounced in the first round of the playoffs. Was that a successful season?

So today’s Question of the Day is:

What would constitute a “successful” season for the Detroit Lions in 2019?

My answer: Simple: A playoff win.

I know that’s asking a lot for a franchise that has only won a single playoff victory in the Super Bowl era, but the past no longer matters. We’re talking about the present, and I think Detroit has enough talent to compete with (read: not necessarily beat) every team in this league. At this point, it’s all about coaching.

The Lions made a coaching change last year so they could pull themselves out of mediocrity. That will obviously take time and a ton of effort to not only get the proper talent in place but to change the mindset of long-standing traditions in that locker room. But this is the NFL, and you aren’t afforded a lot of time.

We saw glimpses last year of what this team can be, and we actually saw it pretty early in the season. Detroit absolutely controlled the play against the Patriots, Packers and Dolphins—all before we even hit Halloween. Those are their blueprints, their proof to trust the system.

If Matt Patricia and company can get those kind of performances on a more consistent basis, this team should absolutely compete on a level worthy of this franchise’s first playoff win since the 1991 season. I’m not predicting they’ll win a playoff game, just saying anything short of that would be a disappointment.

Your turn.