Struggling Lions fire coach Patricia and GM Quinn

Matt Patricia opened his final postgame news conference with the Detroit Lions by thanking his wife and children for their support.

Patricia probably knew what was coming.

His boss, general manager Bob Quinn, might not have expected the same fate.

The Lions fired Patricia and Quinn, who hired the coach to replace Jim Caldwell, and effectively ended the franchise’s attempt to replicate the success the men helped Bill Belichick achieve in New England.

The moves were made on Saturday, surprising no one.

Lions owner Sheila Ford Hamp and team president Rod Wood were expected to explain the decisions and to look ahead at the franchise’s decades-long attempt to win when it matters in the NFL.

Since Detroit won the 1957 NFL title, it has won only one playoff game — and that was way back on Jan. 5, 1992.

This season, the Lions (4-7) lost consecutive games for the third time.

They collapsed in a 41-25 loss to Houston at home on Thursday after getting shut out for the first time in 11 years in the previous game at Carolina.

“I’m just really appreciative of my family, my wife, my kids,” Patricia said Thursday before taking questions from reporters on a Zoom call.

“My wife does a lot behind the scenes and from that standpoint I appreciate her a lot.”

The setbacks dropped Patricia to 13-29-1 in two-plus seasons and Quinn’s mark fell 12 games under .500 over five seasons.

Quinn, who was part of the Patriots’ personnel department for 16 years, was given his first shot to run an NFL front office in January 2016.

He retained Caldwell and Detroit reached the playoffs but then fired him the next season after another 9-7 record wasn’t enough to earn a spot in the post-season.

When Quinn let Caldwell go with a 36-28 record over four seasons and an 0-2 mark in the playoffs, he said the move was made to find a coach to take the team to the next level.

Patricia did that, but it wasn’t the level he or Quinn needed to keep their jobs. Detroit was 6-10 under Patricia in 2018, won just three games last season and was barely better this year.

Patricia was on Belichick’s staff for 14 seasons, including six years as defensive co-ordinator, before Quinn gave him his first shot to be a head coach at any level.

Patricia was incessantly peppered with questions about his job being in jeopardy, dating to the 2019 season, and refused to engage in the conversation with reporters.

“We know that we’ve got a lot of work to do,” Patricia said after falling to 0-3 on Thanksgiving with the Lions. “So, that’s my focus right now.”

ARLINGTON, Texas — Mike McCarthy hadn’t even looked at film almost 24 hours after a failed fake punt sent the Dallas Cowboys spiralling in a Thanksgiving Day loss to Washington. The first-year Dallas coach couldn’t answer a question about the play because he was still dealing the next morning with the aftermath of the sudden death of strength and conditioning co-ordinator Markus Paul, who collapsed in the team’s weight room and died at a hospital the day before the 41-16 loss Thursday.

The emotions were still raw for the Cowboys (3-8) even after having to gather themselves and play a game critical to their hopes of making the playoffs despite their poor record. McCarthy seemed to have trouble composing himself at times in a conference call with reporters, and special teams co-ordinator John Fassel broke down as he started an answer about Paul. The team has said a cause of death was pending for Paul, who was 54.

“It’s been emotionally challenging, overwhelming, I don’t know what words I can use to describe the feeling,” McCarthy said. “It was something that was just so personal for all of us, especially how it happened, where it happened and the timing of it all. We’re just trying to make plans to move forward.”

Dallas was supposed to play on a Thursday-to-Thursday schedule that has become common for the club after Thanksgiving. But the upcoming game against Baltimore was tentatively pushed to Monday, Dec. 7.

McCarthy seemed to have a sense already of the change prompted by COVID-19 issues that forced the NFL to push back the Ravens’ game against Pittsburgh twice.

The coach was actually looking forward to what amounted to another bye week for the Cowboys, who now might not even have to practice for a full week after the Thanksgiving game. McCarthy wanted his players to have all the down time they could get.

“I think it’s important for them to be with their family,” McCarthy said.

“I have no idea what’s going to happen.”

McCarthy and defensive co-ordinator Mike Nolan went through something similar 15 years ago in San Francisco when their roles were reversed.

Nolan said McCarthy, then the offensive co-ordinator for the 49ers, was standing near Thomas Herrion when the 23-year-old offensive lineman collapsed and died in the locker room after a preseason game in Denver.

“It’s a very complicated thing, a very difficult thing to handle,” Nolan said. “I do believe, as I even told Mike, he handled it extremely well and he’ll continue to do that. It’s very difficult for someone in that position to even choose the words that you’re going to say to the group because there are so many different things going on in different players’ minds. I think Mike’s very sensitive to that.”

It has been a dizzying first year for McCarthy and his staff taking over a team that had high hopes.

The pandemic kept the defence from getting the live work in the off-season needed to implement a new scheme. Key injuries hit early and haven’t stopped, the biggest being star quarterback Dak Prescott out for the season after breaking an ankle in Week 5. The offensive line has been in flux all year because of injuries, and now Dallas is having to dig deep into the depth chart at cornerback.

All of those issues lost their significance Tuesday morning when Paul collapsed. Now the Cowboys have to figure out how to keep the emotional toll from lingering with five games remaining and not all hope lost in the NFC East, the only division that doesn’t have a team with a winning record.

“This is the hard part of life,” McCarthy said. “We will deal with it and we’ll use whatever resources we need to. Personal health is always the priority of everybody in our organization. We’ll just continue to work through it.”

The players are getting some extra time to do that on their own after not having much time to process their emotions before the loss to Washington.

“We kind of have a football life and then we have our real lives,” receiver Amari Cooper said.