Saturday open thread: Should the Lions wait until the end of the season to fire Matt Patricia?

Black Friday has come and gone, and all remains quiet on the Detroit Lions’ front. Despite yet another Thanksgiving Day embarrassment, head coach Matt Patricia and general manager Bob Quinn remain employed by the team. It’s clear that the two won’t meet owner Sheila Ford Hamp’s mandate that the team shows enough improvement in 2020 to simply play meaningful games in December.

The team is 4-7 and has been blown out four times in the last five games—three of which came at the hands of teams that will be closer to a top-10 pick than a playoff spot. In order to even sniff the playoffs, the Lions would have to win out, and that’s not going to happen with teams like the Packers, Titans and Buccaneers all left on the schedule.

But the Lions’ silence right now is deafening. A fan base who has been praying that Sheila Ford Hamp will be different than her parents hasn’t heard a peep from the newly-crowned owner. So today’s Question of the Day is:

Would you mind if the Lions waited until the season’s end to fire Matt Patricia?

My answer: No, not really. I’m a firm believer that there’s no tangible benefit to firing a coach midseason, especially when playoff hopes are nonexistent. Firing Patricia and promoting a guy like Darrell Bevell or Brayden Coombs won’t likely provide a spark among a roster that loves Patricia, and even if it did, that would only hurt the team in the long run via draft position. I suppose you could give Coombs a shot to see if he’s worthy to keep around either as the special teams coordinator or even as a head coaching candidate, but that wouldn’t be a very inspired head coaching hire, and his special teams resume already speaks for itself.

That all being said, I absolutely think Ford Hamp needs to come out of the shadows right now and address this. Even a statement as simple as, “What is currently happening is not at all acceptable, and from now until the end of the season, I will assess what’s happening and make the according adjustments at the conclusion of the year.”

I don’t need heads to roll right now, I just need the assurance that it will happen. Of course, there’s always a good chance the Lions are just waiting until Monday...

Your turn.