Meet Matt Patricia, the Lions’ new head coach

Matt Patricia was one of the hottest names on the market for teams looking to replace their head coach after the 2017 season. The Lions won that lottery, and Patricia will take over for Jim Caldwell, the team announced Monday.

“When we launched the search for our next head coach, I wanted to find a leader that could take us to the next level and I am confident we have found that in Matt Patricia,” Lions GM Bob Quinn said in a statement. “He has been preparing for this opportunity his entire career, and he’s ready for the responsibility and its challenges.

“Matt is driven to succeed, has extreme passion for the game and excels in preparation. He embodies the same hard-working, blue-collar attributes that represent our organization and the great City of Detroit.”

So why Patricia? Our Christian D’Andrea says it’s his skill at getting the best out of his defensive players.

His plug-and-play defense has managed to turn undrafted prospects into stars and continue a franchise tradition of turning other teams’ unwanted players into standouts. Malcolm Butler went from Division II starter to Super Bowl hero and All-Pro cornerback under his guidance. Veterans like Kyle Van Noy, Shea McClellin, Rob Ninkovich, and Akeem Ayers all revived their careers after landing in Foxborough.

The Patriots defense got off to a shaky start in 2017. But they rebounded, and finished ranked No. 5 in the league for points allowed per game with just 18.5. It was a tough finish for the team with a 41-33 loss in Super Bowl 52, but Patricia’s body of work over the year warranted a bigger opportunity.

Jeremy Reisman at Pride of Detroit, SB Nation’s Lions blog, broke down every single one of Patricia’s seasons as a defensive coordinator in the NFL. This last one wasn’t a resounding endorsement. But there were extenuating circumstances.

And what’s the reason for the turnaround? Well, it certainly isn’t a matter of getting healthier. Football Outsiders doesn’t have adjusted games lost calculated yet, but New England lost Dont’a Hightower for the season after seven games. Defensive end Derek Rivers missed his entire rookie season. Vany Noy missed a handful of games down the stretch, cornerback Eric Rowe missed half the season, and DE Shea McClellin never came back from IR.

And the Patriots did turn it around and finished the season dramatically better than the way they started it.

Patricia and Quinn have a long history. Quinn was a scout with the Patriots when Patricia was hired in 2004. Quinn was promoted to the assistant director of pro personnel and then the director of pro scouting before being hired by the Lions before the 2016 season.

That relationship paved the way for the hire, according to Rich Hill of Pats Pulpit.

Patricia is the favorite due to his relationship with Lions general manager and former Patriots exec Bob Quinn.

In Patricia’s six seasons as the Patriots defensive coordinator, New England has ranked in the top 10 in points allowed each season, despite ranking in the bottom eight in yards allowed three times. The Patriots allowed the fewest points in the NFL in 2016 and ranked fifth in 2017.

Now the Lions will hope Patricia can help turn around a defense that finished 2017 ranked No. 27 in the league for yards allowed per game with a whopping 355.8.

Patricia was an aeronautical engineering major who didn’t get into coaching right after college, writes D’Andrea.

Patricia took the long road to the NFL, making his mark after earning his stripes at Rensselaer Polytechnical Institute (RPI), a school so invested in science its sports teams call themselves the Engineers. The team’s common opponents in any given year include fellow nerd schools MIT, Rochester, and Worcester Polytechnic. It is, suffice to say, a relative dead end for NFL hopefuls, but a tremendous launching pad for electrical engineers.

Patricia bucked that trend. He held down a spot on the team’s offensive line from 1992 to 1995, then spent his first post-graduate year on the sideline as a graduate assistant. That foray into coaching could have been the end of his football career; the low pay commensurate with football’s equivalent of an internship pushed him into the real world. Patricia spent two years of working with Hoffman Air & Filtration, designing, building, and selling centrifuges. By all accounts, he was a successful and diligent worker, but the siren call of Oklahoma drills and defensive audibles lured him back to the sideline.

Patricia’s smart, he clearly loves the game, and he’ll get a shot to prove himself as a head coach with the Lions starting in the 2018 season.