| Detroit Free Press
Assessing Detroit Lions’ coach, GM searches as regular season ends
Free Press sports writers Dave Birkett and Carlos Monarrez debate Jan. 4, 2021, who the Detroit Lions should hire as general manager and head coach.
Carlos Monarrez and Dave Birkett, Detroit Free Press
If Jeff Okudah learned anything from his rookie season with the Detroit Lions, it’s just how good he had things at Ohio State.
“The reality is, when you’re at Ohio State, things are really looking up a lot of the time; you don’t really have to deal with losing, you don’t deal with dysfunction,” Okudah said. “And I think that when you’re put in a situation (like this year), this is just the real, this is how life works. So you kind of get your, like, little fantasy bubble popped and now you’re in the real world.”
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After three seasons in the sanctuary of one of college football’s most blue blood programs, Okudah learned just how tenuous life can be in the real world with the Lions this fall.
He lost as many games in the month of November — four — as he did during his entire career with the Buckeyes. He went from one of college football’s best defenses to one of the NFL’s worst, where he said scheme, strategy and personality conflicts all contributed to the Lions’ problems. And he clashed with management over an injury that eventually required season-ending surgery.
Okudah underwent surgery Dec. 15 to fix a groin injury that dated to his time at Ohio State.
The Lions spurned attempts by Okudah and his advisers to have the surgery earlier in the season, and only acquiesced once Bob Quinn and Matt Patricia were fired after Thanksgiving.
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Okudah, who said he expects to be full participant in the Lions’ formal offseason program in April, blamed communication issues — on his end and the organization’s — for the butting of heads.
“Actually, I would say maybe communication wasn’t the issue, but maybe just having a concrete plan to go by and everyone on board,” Okudah said. “I think that was the biggest thing. But I think once the plan was identified, that it would be best for everyone involved, I think we were able to take care of it rather quickly.”
Okudah, the No. 3 pick of the 2020 draft, said he had no issues moving laterally this season, but that the injury prevented him from “opening up and just running top speed.”
“Kind of hampered a little bit from doing that,” he said, while making clear he did not meet his standards otherwise as a player. “Like I said, the main point was just not wanting to make excuses, so I think that whatever issues I was having as far as receivers being able to create explosive plays, I need to first and foremost go back and look at the film and see what I can do from a technical standpoint. And then once you’ve addressed that, then I think you just go from there.”
Okudah’s struggles started early, when he missed a Week 1 loss to the Chicago Bears with a hamstring injury.
He was forced into a starting role in Week 2, when the Lions were without cornerbacks Desmond Trufant and Justin Coleman because of injuries, but was an easy mark for quarterbacks Aaron Rodgers, Kyler Murray and Drew Brees early in the season.
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Okudah started six of the nine games he played, had one interception and called 2020 the “most adverse year” of his career.
“I think from my standpoint, I think everyone, all parties involved could have been transparent,” Okudah said. “Obviously, it’s a grown man’s league. Even though I’m a rookie, I think it’s pretty clear to see that it’s a grown man’s league, so I think that something that players always appreciate, as well as coaches and front office, is just transparency. So no hidden agendas, just everyone just being transparent the whole time. And I think that when you have an organization that’s up front on that premise, I think that you have a solid organization.”
Asked if players and coaches were more adversarial, before Patricia was fired, than he was used to at Ohio State, Okudah said, “I guess you could describe it like that in a way.”
“But I think it comes down to, when the players and the coaches aren’t in align, you’re going to have to deal with dysfunction,” he said. “I think that’s just going to be a byproduct of that situation. So I don’t mean it to, I guess, criticize anyone, I’m just saying that whenever you don’t have that aligning within the coaching staff and the players, you just will deal with dysfunction.”
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Interim Lions coach Darrell Bevell said he was not around Okudah enough to speak to the dysfunction he saw. Bevell was the Lions’ offensive coordinator until late-November and worked sparingly with the defense.
Okudah did not play a game after Bevell was promoted to interim coach and was played on injured reserve in mid-December.
As a player, though, Bevell said Okudah has a “bright future” and will be an important part of the Lions’ defense going forward.
“Any time you come in as a young player, particularly picked where he was picked, there’s a lot of pressure,” Bevell said. “And most of the time, it’s pressure that you put on yourself to live up to the billing or live up to the hype or whatever it is. So, No. 1, he had that pressure that comes with that position. No. 2, I mean he’s in a whole new system, he’s learning somebody’s new system that he’s got to be able to function in. Then he gets these nagging injuries, so I think there was probably a lot of frustration that was built up (from) trying to play well, trying to fight through some of these injuries and the things that he had to work through in his rookie campaign.”
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Ultimately, Okudah said all of those things should make him a better player in 2021 and beyond.
“I think that it was really hard to come to the terms of just not playing to the standard of city of Detroit and what they expect to see out there,” Okudah said. “So I think going forward, definitely have that on my mind and definitely something that is really going to fuel my hunger this offseason. Not necessarily trying to prove everyone wrong, just trying to prove a lot of people right.”
Contact Dave Birkett at dbirkett@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @davebirkett.