Dave Birkett

Detroit Free Press

When the Patriots won their first Super Bowl in February 2002, every employee who was invited to the ring ceremony was allowed to bring one guest.

Kyle O’Brien had just finished his second season as a personnel intern with the team, and as then Patriots director of player personnel Scott Pioli recalls, O’Brien brought a very special date.

“Those who were married brought their wives and some of the guys brought girlfriends,” Pioli told the Free Press this week. “Kyle brought his mom, which tells you most of what you need to know about Kyle.

“And I mean that in a great way. He brought his mom because that’s who he is. Yeah, he was dating, but the most important woman in his life at that time was his mom. That’s a really cool thing.”

O’Brien’s mom pulled Pioli aside at one point during the ceremony and jokingly asked what Pioli did to brainwash her son.

O’Brien worked with the New York Jets as a ballboy when Pioli was there a few years earlier, and despite just completing his degree at Harvard, he was insistent on a career in the NFL.

“She goes, ‘Four years of Harvard that we paid for and this is what he wants to do?’” Pioli recalled. “And she was just laughing. And when I gave him the job, I think I started him at like 20 grand a year. That wasn’t 1965 now, either. And she’s, ‘Twenty grand a year.’ I said, ‘But look at the ring. … Isn’t it beautiful?’”

O’Brien will try to win another ring this fall, his fourth, as a member of the Lions.

The Lions hired O’Brien as their new director of player personnel Friday, reuniting him with his good friend, new Lions general manager Bob Quinn.

Quinn and O’Brien spent 12 years together with the Patriots, starting out as interns in 2000 and working their way up.

O’Brien’s addition was part of a larger personnel department overhaul Friday as the Lions also fired their longest tenured scout Scott McEwen.

Contact Dave Birkett at dbirkett@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @davebirkett. Download our free Lions Xtra app on your Apple and Android devices.

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