The Lions play more man coverage than anybody else. Why are they so bad at it?

Last season, the two teams that played the most man coverage were the Detroit Lions and the New England Patriots. Each team put man concepts on the field on 54% of their defensive snaps, per Sports Info Solutions. Not a surprise in that Lions head coach Matt Patricia used to be Bill Belichick’s defensive coordinator, and Patricia has several former Patriots (Trey Flowers, Jamie Collins, Danny Shelton) playing on his defense.

However, the results of man coverage for the two teams could not possibly have been more different last season. In 2019, when playing Cover-0, Cover-1, or 2-Man coverage, not to mention combo man/zone schemes, the Patriots allowed 10 touchdowns, picked off 18 passes, gave up a completion rate of 49.8%, and allowed an opponent QBR of 54.06.

When the Lions were playing those same coverages, they gave up 23 touchdowns, intercepted just four passes, allowed a completion rate of 55.9%, and opposing quarterbacks had a 98.7 QBR when “challenged” with Patricia’s man concepts.

(Photo by Stacy Revere/Getty Images)

This continued in Detroit’s Week 1 loss to the Bears, in which Patricia’s bunch put up a 23-6 third-quarter lead before allowing Mitchell Trubisky (?!?!?) to throw three fourth-quarter touchdown passes in a 27-23 Chicago win. As Chris Burke of The Athletic pointed out, Trubisky was able to make things happen as he hadn’t before after cornerback Desmond Trufant was injured. But with Trufant out, the Lions also gave Trubisky an increasing amount of man coverage… and boy, was that a bad idea. In the fourth quarter against man and combo coverage, Trubisky completed seven of seven passes for 84 yards and all three of his touchdown passes. Cornerback Tony McRae was debited with two of those touchdowns, and safety Tracy Walker had the third.

Now if you know you’re facing a team playing man coverage, and they’re really bad at it, you can throw all your man-beaters at that defense with impunity. As Bears head coach and offensive shot-caller Matt Nagy did on this one-yard touchdown pass to receiver Javon Wims. All Trubisky needed was the man indicator of the defender following his motion receiver, and he knew the crossing concept to the left side of the end zone would be easy money.

And on this 27-yard game-winner to Anthony Miller, the Bears ran a stop route to the outside, and a slot fade to the end zone. Stop/fade is an easy man-beater, and the Lions took the cheese as they tend to do.

So… why are the Lions so bad at man coverage, and why do they insist on doing it more than any other team? Personnel is a big part of it. If your secondary personnel isn’t matched to your schematic concepts, you’re going to get eaten alive — even if the opposing quarterback is Mitchell Trubisky. Before the 2019 season, the Lions signed former Seahawks slot defender Justin Coleman to a four-year, $36 million contract, making Coleman the highest-paid slot defender in NFL history. But Coleman had excelled in Seattle’s zone-based defense, and he wasn’t used to playing man as much as the Lions asked him to. The numbers played out as you might predict: Coleman allowed five touchdowns to just one interception in man and combo coverage last season,

Meanwhile, back to the Patriots. Last May, when I put together a list of the 11 best man coverage cornerbacks, New England’s J.C. Jackson was first. New England’s Jason McCourty was second. New England’s Stephon Gilmore was third. As you would expect, there were no Lions to be seen. Bill Belichick is the modern-day master of aligning personnel to scheme, so it should come as no surprise that when he corralled a group of players whose attributes made them naturals for man coverage, he would install more of it.

Patricia, on the other hand, seems to have made the worst mistake a game-planner can possibly make: He’s subscribed to the idea that no matter what kinds of players he has on his roster, he’s going to run what he runs, and to heck with reality.

Though first-round cornerback Jeff Okudah looks like a man coverage natural, Okudah hasn’t hit the field yet — he was inactive for the Bears game. The Lions had better find a way to get Okudah on the field sooner than later, because their ongoing man coverage disasters are killing this defense, and it’s clear that their head coach isn’t going to do an about-face, no matter how bad it gets.