Getty Matt Patricia shows frustration during a Lions loss.
Matt Patricia didn’t have much go right for him in his tenure with the Detroit Lions, but that might not mean much for his future in the NFL whatsoever.
Patricia took over the Lions with grand desires of making the team into the midwest version of the New England Patriots. Problem was, there is only one version of the Patriots, and Patricia struggled to make his imprint on the roster and the franchise a positive one.
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After the move, Patricia managed to fall upward, landing back with the Patriots in a new role as a consultant. Now that the offseason has progressed, a better idea has been provided about what specifically his role is with the team. As has been written, Patricia is assisting the team with draft preparations, free agency and could be assuming more of the roles of a general manager while being in the mix to become head coach one day.
All of this leads NBC Sports analyst Mike Florio to wonder if it’s possible that the team is grooming Patricia to be their next head coach or even a front office executive. Florio wrote about this in a recent piece at PFT.
He said:
“Regardless of whether and to what extent Patricia’s current duties may lead to a bigger role in the post-Belichick Patriots, Patricia has landed in an ideal spot to expand his experience and knowledge of a modern (and elite) football operation. As Peter King previously has noted on PFT Live, the Rams came away from their head-coaching interview with Patricia in 2017 thinking that he eventually could become a great General Manager.
Maybe he’ll do that. Or maybe he’ll become a head coach again. Or both. The real question is whether he’s willing to wait for Belichick, who turned 69 last week, to move on — and whether Patricia believes he’d win the ensuing scrum with Josh McDaniels and the pair of Belichick sons currently working for the team.
Don’t underestimate Patricia’s chances. He has long been regarded as brilliant within the Patriots organization. Despite his inability to transplant the Patriot Way to a midwestern organization that has largely lost its way for the past six decades years, the 46-year-old Patricia ultimately could be the ideal choice to continue things the way they started when Belichick arrived in 2000.”
Lions fans would disagree with how ideal a choice it would be, but it would be typical of the franchise to see Patricia go and have success somewhere else, especially if that place was New England.
It seems like Belichick still wants to coach for a while, so there might be a bit to wait to see if this ends up happening.
Patricia Joined Patriots During Offseason
Patricia will join the Patriots as an assistant to help the coaching staff in a variety of roles, Evan Rothstein, who had been with the Lions during their last few regimes and famously got to call plays thanks to COVID-19 is also joining Patricia in coming to the Patriots. The story was broken by Jim McBride of the Boston Globe a few months back.
The #Patriots are bringing back Matt Patricia, per @globejimmcbride. He will assist the team’s coaching staff in a variety of roles. But the former #Lions HC is back with Bill Belichick.
When last he left the Patriots, Patricia was being hyped as the team’s brilliant defensive mind on his way to Detroit to team up with Bob Quinn. Obviously, things never worked out for the sides in the Motor City, so now Patricia will retreat back home to New England and try to refocus his career.
At this point, though he was demoted, it’s clear his franchise believes in him significantly.
Patricia’s Tenure With Lions
Patricia came to the Lions fresh off success in New England in 2018, and struggled out of the gate to capture the attention of the locker room. Those struggles never subsided in 2019 or 2020, and the coach was run out of town in embarrassing fashion after a total fail with the team.
Early in his career in Detroit, Patricia has helped the Lions stay in games for the most part but never helped get the team over the hump at closing. That’s perhaps his biggest wart so far as a boss, combined with a lousy defense that has not picked up the program whatsoever. Patricia’s program was defined by disorder within the team, a fact that frustrated many fans as well as the organization.
Both Patricia and Quinn got a mulligan on 2019 considering the rash of injuries that set the team back, and 2020 always seemed to be the make or break year. Things broke. The duo was fired in November, with Patricia maintaining an ugly 13-29-1 mark with the Lions over three failed seasons.
Will Patricia be able to comfortably rehab his career in the friendly confines of New England? That remains to be seen, but many think it’s possible.
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