Notes: Consistency is the key to fixing defensive woes, Patricia says

Heading into a bye week, Detroit Lions head coach Matt Patricia says finding some consistency may be the key to righting the ship.

Patricia was asked Monday about the less-than-spectacular run defense in Sunday’s loss to the New Orleans Saints. At this point, the Lions are allowing about 170 rushing yards per game—the third worst in the league.

“Consistency would be the number one thing for us from that standpoint because I think that to your point, there are those plays that you see on tape that are not good. Those things are happening. We’re getting knocked off the ball or our pad level is too high or our hand placement isn’t good enough. Those are all the things that we have to improve on to make it consistent,” he said.

Patricia said when it comes to the fundamentals — pursuit, hustle, tackling — needed at a high level to find success in the league, the Lions show good spurts of it but lack consistency.

“From my perspective, we just gotta find different ways to coach it better or keep teaching these guys more consistency with it so we can go out and perform better on the field,” he said.

With the bye coming up, Patricia gave —frankly, another frustrating canned answer:

“The bye week every single year is a great week to really do a good self scout and take a look at things that you’re doing well, thinks that you’re not doing well and obviously we have some tape now, so we can get some game tape ... evaluate it and do we like some of the things that we’re seeing?” he said.

So the plan is to review the last couple of weeks. Got it. Overall, he says:“Coaching and playing, it’s all gotta be better, and just more consistent.”

Watch the presser in full below:

And onto the rest of your notes.

• “It’s probably a good thing the Lions didn’t have fans inside Ford Field on Sunday. The fewer witnesses, the better.” Mitch Albom weighs in on the loss for the Detroit Free Press.

• In case you missed it over the weekend, a nice feature from the Freep on Tyrell Crosby and how a trip overseas left a big impact.

• Reactions from Matthew Stafford, Taylor Decker, and Reggie Ragland on the loss:

• With inconsistent play, Matthew Stafford continues to drop in NFL.com’s QB Index.

• Tim Twentyman and Mike O’Hara of detroitlions.com offer some Week 4 observations.

• Barry Sanders is still looking for about 80 people involved in his Lost Fan Mail project: