ALLEN PARK -- A day of training camp under Matt Patricia's watch starts promptly at 9:15 a.m. It allows for no stretching, no lolly-gagging across the dew-soaked grass. Not when pretend touchdowns are on the line.

Lions practices start with goal-line drills these days. The heavy packages, with extra linemen and those relic things called fullbacks and cornerbacks whose arms dangle at the knees. They pack in before they spread out and throw, launching players onto an island before they've had time to warm the blood up.

For fans and players alike, this is the show before the show, a little lightning before the storm. These are the plays that kept Detroit from the playoffs a year ago in games against Pittsburgh and Atlanta. They helped bring their new coach here, and they matter deeply to him.

"What happens as the ball gets closer towards the goal line from a defensive perspective is the anxiety goes up, just the nervousness and obviously wanting to compete to not let them score," Patricia said. "From an offensive standpoint, your adrenaline goes up and you're trying to look for matches and mismatches and try to find some advantages in the defense.

"But everything happens so fast down there because of the shorter space that in that situation, you have to execute at a high level. ... It could be the biggest game of the year and you have to come through."

The plays stir something inside of him, a reminder of how this all came to be. It was Super Bowl 49, Patriots vs. Seahawks, when everyone expected the ball to go to Marshawn Lynch and it instead ended up in the arms of Malcolm Butler. The Patriots got back to their dynasty-like ways yet managed to create a little legend for a country and a sport that begs for pick-me-ups. This was an undrafted rookie cornerback out of West Alabama rising up to learn that something bright could come from all those moments in the dark.

Patricia was one who connected. He was once an undersized center at an engineering school who packed away his cleats to go work in sales until some coach would care to give him a shot. The first big name who finally did, Paul Pasqualoni at Syracuse, is now his defensive coordinator more than 15 years later. They complete the circle between them with a drill that takes players from a crowd and gives them a stage.

Patricia has more than 90 players at the first training camp where he is in control of who makes it and who does not. In tight huddles, the son of two school teachers from a New York town of 3,000 people has a message to share.

"'It doesn't matter how you got here,'" he tells them. "'It's what you do when you're here.'"