The Lions were incensed by a pair of penalties on defensive lineman Trey Flowers for illegal hands to the face late in Monday night’s loss to the Packers and a high-ranking NFL executive agrees that they were right to be furious about one of them.NFL vice president of operations Troy Vincent is at this week’s owners meetings in Florida and he addressed the calls during a session with reporters on Tuesday. Vincent said the “foul wasn’t there” after reviewing tape of the second illegal hands to the face penalty and that it is not the kind of call you want to see officials make.Vincent said that he would reach out to Lions owner Martha Ford and General Manager Bob Quinn to relay that message.Vincent’s response won’t change the outcome of Monday night’s game. It is also unlikely to put a halt to conversations about ideas like adding a sky judge to officiating crews in order to correct such calls before they wind up having an outsize impact on results. Warren Sharp believes so Travis Fulgham Detroit Lions Jersey , and has numbers to back him up." Detroit Lions AnalysisDid Matt Patricia destroy the Detroit Lions?New,145commentsWarren Sharp believes so, and has numbers to back him up. EDTShare this storyShare this on FacebookShare this on TwitterShareAll sharing optionsShareAll sharing options for:Did Matt Patricia destroy the Detroit Lions?TwitterFacebookRedditPocketFlipboardEmailPhoto by Leon Halip/Getty ImagesNFL analyst and gambling expert Warren Sharp did a statistical analysis of the Detroit Lions 2018 offense on Friday, comparing it to their previous two predecessors, and came to what seems like a pretty damning conclusion:Sharp talks about the shift the Lions made from a pass-heavy team to a more balanced offense in 2018, and looked at how the offense compared to its 2017 version, which faced similar levels of competition. He comes to the conclusion that head coach Matt Patricia ruined Detroit’s offense in a miscalculated experiment where he used an old-school, run first Travis Fulgham Jersey 2019 , offense. Sharp has a few statistical points that he makes to prove his thesis. I’m going to take a closer look at them.If you’re a regular reader here, or follow me on Twitter, you might already know how I feel about run-focused offenses in the NFL. Running the ball is significantly less efficient than passing the ball, and obviously a less efficient offense overall is going to have more trouble converting first downs. The shift to a more run-focused offense did make the offense less efficient on a per play basis. On the other hand, one could argue that it is a valid trade off because Detroit plays a style of football that obviously focuses on time of possession and keeping the opposing offense off the field. I may not agree with that argument, but it is a valid one. This one is interesting. One would hope that a shift to the run would be a boon to Detroit’s play action passing, but the numbers show otherwise. Sharp may be misattributing the blame here, though. He seems to blame it on Patricia and the coaching scheme Travis Fulgham Jersey Mens , but the blame may belong to Matthew Stafford.Stafford’s yards per pass on play-action plays decreased by 20.6 percent between 2017 to 2018. His yards per pass on non play-action plays decreased 11 percent. Play-action or not, Stafford became a significantly less efficient passer between 2017 and 2018. Whether you want to attribute this to his health, regression or scheme, that is obvious.While the drop off in play-action efficiency was definitely steeper, isolating Patricia as the only factor that changed in the offenses play-action game from year to year seems dishonest. This point is similar to the last one. Stafford was much worse in 2018 than 2017, but there were more changes in Detroit than just Patricia. Golden Tate, Stafford's favorite target for the latter half of the last decade, left half way through the season. Theo Riddick heavily regressed and Marvin Jones Jr. could not stay healthy. These are factors that Stafford did not have to deal with in 2017.Also Youth Travis Fulgham Jersey , Sharp may be putting the carriage before the horse here. Did the Lions passing less cause Stafford to be less efficient, or did they pass less because Stafford was less efficient?Repeating the same point as earlier, Stafford also regressed when teams did not blitz. He regressed everywhere. Again, Stafford got worse everywhere, but I do think this point has more merit than the others. One argument for running the ball often on early downs is that it pulls in defenses, making things easier when you take longer shots downfield. This obviously did not work out for Detroit, though, and a trade off they expected from running the ball more never materialized. Something something Stafford was also worse outside of the red zone maybe the issue was just Stafford.A drop for a 50 percent success rate to a 46 percent success rate seems marginal. Also White Travis Fulgham Jersey , Kerryon Johnson struggled with health issues for a lot of the year and LeGarrette Blount was an aging player on the last legs of his career. In whole, that running back room is only barely more talented than the duo of Theo Riddick and Ameer Abdullah.<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="19HjdW">In conclusion, did Matt Patricia destroy the Detroit Lions? Maybe.Is it because of the reasons Sharp says he did? No.The main argument for passing the ball over running the ball is that passing the ball is generally more efficient on a per play basis. There is an alternate argument that running the ball makes passing the ball easier, but that is not true.Sharp proved the second argument false with this article. By running the ball more, the Lions offense did not get better in the passing game. It is hard to show correlation between running the ball more and the passing game being less efficient, though. One could argue that Stafford’s 6.8 yards per passing attempt last season is still much better than the 4.1 yards per rushing attempt the team had and say that it is a reason for running the ball less. This is an argument that I would agree with.Stafford regressed in 2018, and that is not Patricia’s fault. The Lions probably would have been better if they did not take the ball out of Stafford’s hand as often — regression or otherwise — and that is the fault of Patricia and his coaching staff.