Detroit Lions head coach Matt Patricia explained what he is feeling and how the team is reacting to the murder of George Floyd.
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Matt Patricia shows frustration during a Lions loss.
Detroit Lions coach Matt Patricia saw the news of George Floyd’s murder in Minneapolis, Minnesota roll in as most folks did and he was running the gamut of thoughts just like every other American.
How could this happen? What could he say, and more importantly, what to do? As coach of the Lions, Patricia is in a unique spot as leader of a locker room and a team given players look to him for guidance. That was true even as the coach was struggling to make sense of what he saw so much he couldn’t sleep or perhaps find the right words.
Patricia opened up to Albert Breer of Sports Illustrated in a piece and explained what he felt after seeing the video that has haunted the world, while explaining how the team has been taking the news.
“Honestly, I was just disgusted, angry, sad, depressed,” Patricia said. “The range of emotion, you watch the video, someone being murdered and you’re like… I didn’t even know how to process it. And the range of emotion I know I felt in watching that was only one-tenth of a fraction of a minute percent of what my players must’ve been feeling. So when I got up on Friday, I didn’t sleep much. I’d been grinding on stuff all night, it was just, ‘This isn’t right.’”
As Patricia also told Breer, it was on him as the coach to set the tone after that moment and he did so simply by listening to his players and opening the floor up to them while letting the conversation dictate where everybody goes next. As he said, the meeting was little about football and more about life.
“It was just about listening and making sure we tried to get on and open it up for conversation, real conversation, truthful conversation, honest conversation, heartfelt conversation,” Patricia said. “And really, honestly, credit to my players for leading that. They’re the ones that really were able to get it to where it became so powerful.
