INDIANAPOLIS -- NFL people like to say winning football starts up front. But Matt Patricia, a longtime linebackers coach, approaches things a little differently.

He was known for his multiple defenses in New England, which ranked among the 10 stingiest in the league each of his six years calling the shots. And he says those defenses were built from the middle out.

"When you walk into a room with Tedy Bruschi, Mike Vrabel, Junior Seau, Willie McGinest, Rosevelt Colvin, those are going to be the guys that you're kind of building around from there," Patricia said last week after arriving at the NFL combine. "So that's kind of my starting point."

Now that defense is coming to Detroit, except Detroit lacks the same kind of depth and experience at linebacker. Which means the development of young players like Jarrad Davis and Jalen Reeves-Maybin -- linebackers taken in the first four rounds of last year's draft -- is a high priority. Especially if the club wants to run more four-linebacker sets, as expected.

Tahir Whitehead, who started last season on the strong side, and Paul Worrilow, who started on the weak side, are eligible to become free agents next week.

"You always want to be strong in the middle of your defense," Patricia said. "So anybody who plays through the core, whether it's the linebackers or safeties, they're critically important to what you're trying to do. And that was one thing we were able to do consistently over the years in New England."

Davis, the 21st overall pick, arrived in Detroit shouldering some lofty expectations. The linebackers had been dreadful in 2016, and he was expected to win a starting job immediately. He was expected to call out the plays, and improve their speed against the pass, and add some sand against the run.

That's a lot to expect of a first-year pro. And Davis struggled early, especially against the pass.

So the Lions scaled back his role midseason by getting him off the field in obvious passing situations. That let him do a few things well and build some confidence, before expanding his role down the stretch. And he played much better in his return to a full-time job.

Davis finished the season with 96 tackles, which led the league's rookies, and the Lions are hopeful he can still develop into the linebacker they envisioned when they made the pick.

"Jarrad had a good rookie year," general manager Bob Quinn said. "We threw him right into the mix from the start. I mean, middle linebacker playing every snap for the first however many weeks. Making the calls on defense, and then we kind of slowed it back there midseason a little bit, to kind of let him just go play. And then toward the end of the season he really stepped it up, played great down the stretch.

"J.D.'s a player that obviously we liked well enough to take in the first round and to start from Day 1. We have a great deal of faith in his future."

Patricia's first defensive job in the NFL was working with the Patriots' linebackers from 2006-10, and he had some great ones at his disposal over the years. That includes a star like Dont'a Hightower most recently, and when Hightower was lost in the middle of last season, Patricia trained Kyle Van Noy to replace him.

Van Noy was Detroit's second-round pick in 2014, but struggled to produce and was eventuallly traded to New England for almost nothing in 2016. The teams swapped sixth- and seventh-round picks in exchange for him, and that was it. Then Van Noy became a good player almost immediately. And when Hightower went down last year, he stepped into the job and New England actually got better.

Van Noy credited New England's coaching for saving his career, and Patricia in particular. He just knows defense so well, especially at linebacker. Now there is a hope he can do the same for Davis.

"(He) had a lot of snaps out there as a young guy, which I've been through that before with a couple players, especially at the linebacker position," Patricia said. "That's an extremely difficult thing to do. When you're in the middle of the defense and you're trying to control and tie together both the front end and the back end, there's a lot of pressure in that situation. For him to go out obviously and do it at a high level like he did last year is a great sign, but we're just going to have to see what it looks like moving forward into the next year.

"There's always a little bit of a change, and obviously there's going to be a big change now with the coaching staff and the scheme and all the rest of it. So we'll see how that goes."

Reeves-Maybin, a fourth-round pick out of Tennessee, could become a part of those plans as well. The Lions love how much ground he can cover with his speed, though he remains undersized due to a shoulder injury that prevented him from lifting for much of his final year in college.

He appeared in 14 games last year, but played just 22 percent of the defensive snaps. More is expected from him in 2018.

"Jalen's really athletic," Quinn said. "He's really instinctive. He's a tiny bit undersized. Coming out of college he had a shoulder injury, so he wasn't really able to lift his last six months of college going into the draft. I think this offseason is going to be really important for him in kind of developing his body. He knows that. We've talked about that. And he's a really athletic guy that can play in sub-defenses, he can play in base defense. So he's a versatile guy."