2019 Detroit Lions Awards: Coach of the Year

Detroit Lions head coach Matt Patricia may be under fire after two extremely poor seasons in Detroit, but some of his staff have actually proven to be worthy of their positions. There were some successes with specific positional units, and even some hope on the horizon for others.

So without further ado, here are your nominees for 2019 Detroit Lions Coach of the Year.

(See all other award nominations here)

Offensive coordinator Darrell Bevell

After taking a year off from coaching, Darrell Bevell came to the Detroit Lions hoping to put the rough 2018 season of Jim Bob Cooter behind everyone. Many were disappointingly expecting Bevell to turn the Lions into a running team, but it appeared he had done just the opposite.

Unlike Cooter, Bevell knew how to utilize Matthew Stafford’s arm strength, and suddenly the deep ball was back in Detroit. Bevell quickly helped make the Lions’ offense lethal again, and even drew up some seriously impressive play designs that actually got receivers open. Bevell’s impressive year was muted by injuries to key offensive players late in the season, but fans remain hopeful about Bevell going into 2020, which is more than we can say about most Lions coaches.

Quarterbacks coach Sean Ryan

Credit also goes to QB coach Sean Ryan for this quick turnaround. Ryan was put in an impossibly hard situation throughout the course of the entire year. After training camp was over, the Lions completely overhauled their backup quarterback situation, and it was Ryan’s job to get those guys acclimated to Detroit’s offense in case of injury to Stafford.

When that injury eventually came, Ryan had done a good enough job to get solid performances out of both Jeff Driskel and David Blough, both of whom hadn’t been with the team more than a few months. When you throw in the fact that Driskel and Blough had almost no warning that they were about to start a game, it speaks to Ryan’s solid coaching throughout the year.

Special teams coordinator John Bonamego

It’s odd to nominate a coach that was let go this offseason, but Bonamego does deserve some credit for turning around a bad unit from 2018. This year got off to a troubling start, when special teams penalties were seemingly happening every special teams play. However, the Lions soon cleaned that up and turned into a pretty respectable unit.

Jamal Agnew returned to form, and Detroit’s strategy on kickoffs worked quite well for the first couple months of the season. However, Detroit started to give up some big plays in coverage late in the year, and that may have been the reason Bonamego was shown the door.

Wide receivers coach Robert Prince

One of the longest tenured coaches of the Detroit Lions, Prince has seemingly produced top-tier talent at wide receiver since he arrived in 2014. This year, both Kenny Golladay and Marvin Jones Jr. were at the top of their game and at the top of the touchdown leaderboard. In addition to that, 34-year-old Danny Amendola nearly had a career year in 2019.

Prince has always been regarded as one of the Lions’ best—and most well-liked—coaches over the past few years.