Matt Patricia's story: Sleepless nights, hard work paved way to Detroit Lions

Matt Patricia didn’t have a car, at least not that anyone remembers.

When he gave up a high-paying job as an engineer to start coaching football full-time as an assistant at tiny Amherst College in 1999, Patricia typically rode his bike to and from work.

That’s why, on a winter day shortly after his second season at the school, Patricia was pestering Amherst offensive coordinator Don Faulstick for a ride to a coaching clinic in Connecticut.

Patricia heard about a graduate assistant job opening at Syracuse, and he wanted to go to the clinic to talk to one of its presenters, Orange offensive line coach George DeLeone.

It was snowing, heavily, but Faulstick agreed, and the two hopped in a school rental and made the hour drive south down I-91. It was during that trip that Faulstick, now the athletics director at Amherst, recalls Patricia first sharing his dream.

"On the way down, I think he was like, 'Yeah, you know what, I think I really want to do this and be a pro coach and all that stuff,' " Faulstick said. "And you’re trying to be realistic. You’re like, ‘Yeah, dude, that’s great. That would be great. But hey, you know, you can keep banging it out at Amherst or work your way up in the Ivy League, maybe go to Harvard or something.’ But he was like, ‘Nah, I’m pretty sure that’s what I want to do.’ And he did it."

Patricia parlayed a 10-minute or so conversation with DeLeone that day into a GA job at Syracuse. Three years of hard work with the Orange led him to the New England Patriots. And after 14 years on Bill Belichick’s staff in New England, “Matty P” is poised to become the 27th head coach of the Detroit Lions once the Patriots’ season ends sometime in the next two weeks — perhaps with another Super Bowl.

The Lions cannot officially comment on Patricia or reach agreement with him on a contract until New England’s season is done. But a team source told the Free Press that the deal is as close to being finalized as it can get with the Patriots still playing.

And as the front-runner for the job since Jim Caldwell was fired on New Year’s Day, more than a dozen of Patricia’s former teammates, players, coaches and colleagues, as well as other NFL insiders, said his unique blend of intelligence, hard work, perseverance and leadership have him primed for major success.

"With Matt Patricia, you have zero doubt that he will be a tremendous head coach,” said Bob Surace, the Princeton head coach who was Patricia’s offensive line coach at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the Division III school he played football at in upstate New York. “Having worked under a couple NFL head coaches and seen successful NFL head coaches, he has every trait to be an outstanding head coach. His preparation. The buy-in the players will have for him.

"Players want to be great. Players, if you get the right guys, what they want to do is be great. They want to excel. This is professional football, they want to excel in their profession. So if you map the outline for them to excel, that’s all they want. Matt will have the outline for them to excel as individuals, to excel as units and to excel as a team."

The spark to coach

Patricia always has been the overachieving type.

He grew up the son of two schoolteachers in Sherrill, N.Y., about halfway between Utica and Syracuse, where he played football and wrestled at Vernon-Verona-Sherrill High, and dreamed of one day flying airplanes.

He studied aeronautical engineering at RPI, where students averaged a score of 2,064 out of 2,400 on the old SAT, and played four seasons of football there as an offensive lineman.

Friends and former roommates remember Patricia as the smartest man in the room, though he never acted like it, and a driven person who was great at connecting with people.

He talked at one point of taking a test to become a military pilot, and once helped sand a glider plane for a project at school.

"I don’t know if he would have made weight to fly the glider. That was the key,” joked Patricia’s former teammate and roommate Travis Krol, the best man in Patricia’s first wedding.

Krol and Patricia grew up about 20 minutes from each other and roomed together during their five years at RPI, first in a dorm, then at their Theta Chi fraternity house, where Patricia was vice president, and finally in an apartment they swore had rats in the walls.

Patricia abhorred doing dishes, and he and Krol used to take tennis ball canisters from the training room to serve as extra cups. But at just about everything else, he excelled.

"He’s always been a people’s person,” Krol said. "He’s always there either for teammates or when he started coaching in college, always there for the guys and the players, either helping them in the classroom or on the field, always making himself available to everybody."

As a player, Patricia sat the bench for two years before cracking the lineup as an offensive guard and center. Surace said Patricia "probably was the seventh or eighth most talented" offensive lineman on the roster, but he graded out "as one of the top guys" in every game he played because of his attention to detail and his work ethic.

"When you’re a backup at RPI and you’re not playing your first two or three years, it’s not like being a backup at Michigan where you’re on full scholarship and you got the girls and you got this and you got that,” said Bob Jojo, RPI’s offensive line coach when Patricia first arrived, and the school’s offensive coordinator when he graduated. "There’s none of that at RPI, so you’ve got to be pretty focused and you’ve got to be pretty determined to stick with it when there’s a million other things a college kid can do instead of having somebody yell at you and somebody tell you you’ve got to come in and watch film and tell you you’ve got to do this and you’ve got to do that when you’re not playing."

Patricia first got the jones to coach after he graduated, when he stayed at RPI for one year to work on his master’s degree and help as a grad assistant with the offense.

Joe King, RPI’s head coach at the time, said Patricia plowed hours into the program, where he ran the team’s study hall, helped tutor underclassmen, served as assistant offensive line coach, helped in the weight room and even did some recruiting.

"He was pretty busy," King said. “I think he had, as a young fella especially, I think he had a pretty good overall handle on coaching. Some people, they live in their own little world, say on the offensive line. I think you could see that he had a grasp of and he really wanted to go beyond say that one area. You could see that he had some abilities not normal for people his age."

Patricia hoped to stay in coaching after his GA year at RPI, and that spring he and Krol traveled up and down the East Coast in Krol’s old gray Mercury Sable looking for jobs.

They went to Atlanta, where Krol dropped off résumés at any place that would take them and Patricia met with George O’Leary about a grad assistantship at Georgia Tech. They stopped at Maryland, where Patricia met with coaches and the two friends toured the university’s esteemed engineering school and saw the school’s natural buoyancy pool.

At one point, Krol, a defensive lineman at RPI, tried out for the Albany Firebirds of the Arena Football League. Patricia went along for support, Krol said, and in typical Patricia fashion, he found himself in conversation with the team’s coach and was offered a nonpaying graduate assistant-type position.

Patricia didn’t take that job, but Krol said “that’s actually what I remember sparked his interest into coaching a lot is after he got done speaking with them.”

‘Smarter than everyone else’

The real world called after graduation, and Patricia reportedly had suitors there, too, including a six-figure offer from Westinghouse to maintain nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers.

"I think it’s life and sometimes it’s expectation,” Surace said. “When you’re as smart as he is, professors, faculty, deans, they’re helping him on the other end saying we don’t have enough engineers like this guy. So they’re fighting to get a guy like that as well."

Eventually, Patricia took a job as an engineer with Hoffman Air & Filtration in Syracuse, where his work involved supplying industrial blowers to oil refineries and wastewater plants.

The tug of football never left, though, and while Patricia worked at Hoffman, he spent his down time volunteering with a local high school team and with the semi-pro Syracuse Storm.

Two years into his career at Hoffman, Patricia started calling some of his old coaches for advice on getting back into the business

King, his old coach at RPI, said he wasn’t surprised to hear from Patricia because “I understood how much he loved football."

Surace, who had moved on to Western Connecticut, said he encouraged Patricia to do what would make him happy when it became clear he "was working as a rocket scientist and was unfulfilled."

"You go to a really high academic school and the expectation is you go to Wall Street or you’re an engineer and you’re working at NASA," said Surace, a Princeton grad. "To me, my dad was a high school coach. I loved the difference you could make as a football coach in people’s lives. … You may not make as much money as you would on Wall Street, but you’re going to make a difference in others and you’re going to be a lot happier and you’re going to want to have a job where you walk through the doors and you are excited about whatever it is. Game planning, recruiting, whatever level you are at coaching, that’s what you want to be excited about. So when a guy like Matt Patricia wants to go into coaching, we need more guys like that. We don’t have enough of them. And I’m going to do everything I can to help him."

Surace called Faulstick at Amherst, and when Faulstick told Patricia about a part-time job working with the defensive line, Patricia was in.

Though he was coaching a new position, and was the least experienced coach on staff, it didn’t take long before Patricia was wowing his new colleagues. He put together a highlight tape of Amherst’s big win over rival Williams that first year for the end-of-season banquet, and coaches marveled at both the speed and quality of it. Throughout the year, he opened eyes with his willingness to ask questions and his ability to find better ways to do things.

"He was just smarter than all of us,” Faulstick said. "Like, we’d be watching tape or we’d be talking about a different way to do something, and he’d just say, ‘Why don’t we do this?’ Or, ‘Why don’t we scout this way?’ Or, ‘Why don’t we break down tape like this?’ And we’d like look around the room and go, ‘Man, this guy’s really smart. Yeah, we should be doing this.'

“He was just smarter than everyone else from the get-go and we were just trying to play catch-up."

Surace, who spent eight seasons with the Cincinnati Bengals before taking over at Princeton in 2010, recalled a similar feeling talking football with Patricia one day over drinks at the NCAA coaches convention.

"Just like anybody else, you get down to the convention, you get a hotel room, you get a few sodas or whatever and some food and you end up talking ball," Surace said. "And I’m listening to all these guys that are D-coordinators at other schools. 'How do you stop the wishbone? How do you stop things that we struggled with?' And Matt always had the best answer. And some of the things he was talking about, moving back and forth from a 3-4 to a 4-3 and getting a free rusher, I was probably 28, 29 years old tops. He’s like 23, and my jaw’s dropping that I’d never heard anybody speak about defensive play the way he did."

'Bill's foster child'

Patricia hustled his way to Syracuse after that run-in with DeLeone, and he hustled his way to the Patriots after that.

At Syracuse, Patricia spent three years as a graduate assistant with duties that revolved largely around breaking down film. DeLeone, now the offensive line coach at Baylor, said he did not know Patricia "from a box of doorknobs" before they met that fateful snowy day in 2001, but in the brief conversation he could see how much Patricia wanted the job.

"It wasn’t what he said, it was how he said it," DeLeone recalled. "It was the look in his eye. I said, 'Hey listen now, I need a grinder. I need a guy who’s going to frickin’ grind it out and this is what it’s going to take, this is what it’s going to be.' And there was like no doubt in his mind he was going to do it. So that impressed me. They always say you have one chance to make a first impression and the first impression he made with me was this is a guy that’s hungry, this is a guy that’s going to work. And that impressed me at the beginning."

In February 2004, Patricia approached DeLeone, said he heard of an entry-level opening with the Patriots and asked if the well-connected line coach could put in a good word for him.

DeLeone did just that by calling Patriots assistant Josh McDaniels, who was overseeing the search — "when I say the search, it was probably for a $5,000 job that you had to work 70 hours a week for," DeLeone said.

As the story goes, Patricia went to New England for a grueling interview with Belichick, where he impressed the cantankerous coach. The Patriots called to offer him the job not long after his interview, but when Patricia said he needed to talk it over with his then-wife Amy, the Patriots pulled the offer, wondering if he was committed.

DeLeone, Surace and others reached back out to people they knew in the organization, and eventually the Patriots relented and hired Patricia on March 1.

In New England, Patricia helped modernize the Patriots’ film process in his first season in 2004. He put in regular 20-hour days that endeared him to Belichick and others, and friend and former teammate Scott Sasenbury said "that was probably one of his early successes" in New England.

In 2005, after he turned down an opportunity to join departing Patriots offensive coordinator Charlie Weis at Notre Dame, Patricia was promoted to assistant offensive line coach, and from there his rapid ascent — and the feeling that he was being groomed as Belichick’s right-hand man — was on.

Belichick, before he became perhaps the greatest coach in NFL history, took his own lesser-traveled path to the pros. His father was a college coach and former fullback for the Lions, and he played football, lacrosse and squash while majoring in economics at Wesleyan University in Connecticut.

In Patricia, he saw a bright, motivated, football-savvy pupil who soaked up information like a sponge and had a knack for getting things done.

"Bill was kind of like that, and he’s always liked those guys that have paid those dues," said former Patriots senior football adviser Floyd Reese. "I don’t want to speak for Bill, but I’m not sure he didn’t think that maybe it was a little bit more valuable to them, a little bit more important because it wasn’t like they were the five-star coming out and had been given a lot of things. I mean just about everything they had gotten, they had earned. And Matt’s a highly educated, really bright guy. He could have done a hundred things other than coach football, so for him to choose to coach football, it’s because he loves it and that’s what he wanted to do."

Patricia’s friends said there were other reasons the two hit it off. Patricia and Belichick went through divorces around the same time, and Patricia’s tireless work ethic — he often spent nights on the couch he had in the office he shared with Pepper Johnson — mirrored Belichick’s own indefatigable approach.

"He was Bill’s foster’s child in the sense that that man would, a lot of nights, or a lot of meetings in the morning at 5 in the morning or something I’d have with him and he’d just come in and have just the reddest eyes ever or blue under his eyes because he hasn’t slept in three days," former Patriots linebacker Dane Fletcher said. "People don’t understand how hard these coaches work in New England. And the two leaders I can think of is Bill Belichick and Matt Patricia in that sense, where you know as a player you’re not watching more film than them because it’s not possible."

Patricia spent one season as Dante Scarnecchia’s assistant on the offensive line in 2005 before moving to the defensive side of the ball. He coached linebackers for five seasons in 2006-10, moved to safeties in 2011, and took over as defensive coordinator in 2012.

The Patriots finished in the top 10 in scoring defense in each of Patricia’s six seasons as coordinator, and cracked the top five the last two years.

"He’s smart," former Lion and current Patriots linebacker Kyle Van Noy said at the Super Bowl last year. “I mean, he’s a smart, smart guy. He loves football. He truly loves football. A lot of coaches love football, but he. like, has a desire to be so good and so great. And it’s contagious and you want to be around a coach like that. He’s awesome. He has great schemes and it works."

A personal touch

Patricia is so smart that former Patriots linebacker Rob Ninkovich told the Free Press two years ago that, if not for football, Patricia would be "up there working on boosters or something for NASA. I don’t know, how do you get to Mars? Something like that."

But what players rave about, beyond Patricia’s intelligence, is his ability to communicate in a very simple and personal way.

"When it comes to understanding football, coming up with defensive packages, game-planning, obviously he’s very, very talented, one of the best in the business," said former Patriots linebacker Niko Koutouvides, who spent the last two of his 10 NFL seasons in New England. "And just Matt’s work ethic, his personality, how he understands players. He’s demanding, but he understands players. He sees them as real people. He treats you with respect. He’s honest. And his work ethic is phenomenal."

While Belichick’s support, and the three Super Bowl rings Patricia owns, ensures his credibility in any locker room, former players glow about Patricia's other endearing qualities.

He has a “very commanding” presence in meetings, Koutouvides said. He’s an astute teacher of defenses and techniques. And his gruff appearance, with a bushy beard, hat turned backward and pencil always in his ear, is contrasted by a softer personal side.

More: What does Matt Patricia look like without a beard? We found a photo

Patricia, who shared a house with Lions vice president of player personnel Kyle O'Brien early in his tenure in New England, has been known to hand out generous gift cards at Christmastime to his players, many of whom make more money than him, and quietly pick up dinner tabs when he sees players out on the town. For years, he has ended Friday meetings by playing clips of some of his or his players’ favorite comedy acts, including Eddie Murphy, Kevin Hart, Bernie Mac and one of his personal favorites, Sebastian Maniscalco. He's currently trying to plan an elk-hunting trip with Fletcher in Fletcher's native Montana. And last year, he famously wore a Barstool Sports T-shirt that depicted NFL commissioner Roger Goodell as a clown after the Patriots’ Super Bowl LI win.

The Patriots organization was feuding with Goodell at the time over Tom Brady's Deflategate suspension.

"The great coaches need to be teachers and leaders and they need to influence others,” Koutouvides said. "And how do you influence someone? You have to kind of tap into them emotionally. You’ve got to be able to grab them, because if not, it’s going to go in one ear and out the other because either they don’t respect you or what you’re saying isn’t really important or valued to them. And he’s able to capture that."

Surace said Patricia has the same effect on coaches.

When Patricia married his current wife, Raina, on a private island in Aruba early in the summer of 2009, much of New England’s coaching staff and front office were there.

Surace, who was with the Bengals at the time, said he couldn’t help but notice how Patricia seemed to be at the center of every conversation.

"They looked up to him, they gathered around him, they listened to him,” Surace said. “All the guys, they laugh with him, they enjoy it. But you could tell that the guys he was working with, those guys have a genuine care for each other."

A legacy, a title

Patricia will be with that group of guys for at least a few more days before he joins his good friends and former Patriots colleagues O'Brien and Lions general manager Bob Quinn in Detroit.

The Patriots host the Jacksonville Jaguars in the AFC championship game Sunday, and the winner takes on the Minnesota Vikings-Philadelphia Eagles winner Feb. 4 in the Super Bowl.

Winning another championship would be the perfect end to what has been an amazing run in New England.

Two decades ago, Patricia was a man without a purpose, fumbling around with centrifuges while he looked for a way back into football.

He found it through friends and hard work and some good old fashioned hustle. He won a Super Bowl in his first season as a grunt with the Patriots, and soon he’ll go to work on trying to do the same with the Lions.

Coming off their second straight 9-7 season, the Lions aren't the ready-made Super Bowl contender that Patricia has gotten accustomed to in New England. But Quinn's belief is that they're not that far off, either.

With quarterback Matthew Stafford leading a deep group of skill players, and Pro Bowl cornerback Darius Slay anchoring the defense, Quinn said at the start of his search that he wanted to find a difference-making coach who could "help us win a championship."

That, friends and former players and colleagues say, is Patricia.

More: Ex-Michigan LB Pierre Woods: Matt Patricia will make Detroit Lions 'champions'

"He’s not just looking for the next step, he’s looking for probably the step," Sasenbury said. "He’s been with the Patriots his entire NFL career, and there’s a reason for that because I think he wants to go somewhere, he wants to build something, he wants to have a legacy similar to Belichick and some of those guys. But he’s a loyal guy. He’s not looking to come in and get rich, he’s looking to put his mark on a team and take them to the next level."

Contact Dave Birkett: dbirkett@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @davebirkett. Download our Lions Xtra app for free on Apple and Android!