ALLEN PARK -- Matt Patricia wanted to hire a new director of video operations this week. And anyone paying attention to how he's assembled his staff could have predicted the hire.

Just go find yourself a Syracuse football program from 2001.

You'll find Paul Pasqualoni listed under head coach. Now he is Patricia's defensive coordinator. Brian Stewart was the defensive backs coach and David Walker was the running backs coach. They'll hold the same positions in Detroit.

Chris White filled various roles at Syracuse from 2000-08. He'll coach Detroit's tight ends in Detroit. David Corrao was at Syracuse from 2000-03. He'll be Detroit's director of football research.

So when Patricia went to hire a new director of video operations this week, it comes as no surprise he tapped Erik Kunttu for the position. After all, he was the director of video operations at Syracuse from 1994-2011.

It's not uncommon for coaches to staff their teams with people they know. But six assistants from the same Syracuse team 15 years ago? Or seven, including Patricia himself?

It was obviously a big year for him. He was a 26-year-old assistant at the time, and had just two years of Division III experience when Pasqualoni hired him to be an offensive assistant. It was his first big break, and three years later, he parlayed it into a job with the Patriots. The rest is history.

But why is he stocking his first staff with so many coaches from the old days?

"That Syracuse connection is really tight," Patricia told MLive. "In fact, at the combine, we'd always try to have a Syracuse night, and we'd have like 45 guys show up. We'd just get together and talk about stuff and maintain those connections, and that was important to us.

"It was very similar to the staff we had at New England, from the continuity of it. We're grinding at this game. We're trying to work hard and make sure we find an advantage and put ourselves in a position to win. When you go through that with people, you really learn. You grow close together. So for me, those connections have been really tight. I trust them, and they trust me, and I know they're going to coach hard."

Syracuse did have a great year when Patricia arrived, going 10-3. That's still the school's best record since 1992. But they fell to 4-8 in 2002, then 6-6 each of the next two years and Pasqualoni was fired, breaking apart the staff.

That's when Pasqualoni headed for the NFL, and he landed on Bill Parcells' staff in Dallas in 2005. There is a lot of crossover between the Parcells and Bill Belichick coaching trees, and their defensive principles are similar, so Patricia continued to chop it up with his old coach over the years.

And Patricia said bringing him to Detroit was about more than just paying back a guy who gave him his first big break.

"He's obviously somebody that I've been close with a long time. Somebody who gave me a chance a long time ago, and really taught me a lot," Patricia said. "But I learned a lot from Coach P and just the way he motivated and coached the team. How he handled a lot of situations as a head coach. And I just think that my experience with him, and the loyalty, and the trust and all that, is stuff that I really relate to.

"When you start talking about philosophy and fundamentals and what you believe in and how you play, there's so much crossover, that we were in constant communication. Like, 'Hey, how did you play this technique? Or, 'what did you do here?' Or, 'how did you handle this problem?' We were always going back and forth. And he's a New England guy, so he'd come up to Rhode Island quite a bit, and my wife's family is in Rhode Island, so we'd see each other."

Patricia rose to prominence as a defensive coordinator himself in New England. He declined to say how involved he'll be with Detroit's defense, what he'll delegate to Pasqualoni and who will call the plays on Sundays.

"You know what the good thing about being the head coach is?" he deadpanned. "Any time I want to call a play -- offense, defense or special teams -- I get to call it. So that'll be pretty exciting for me."