A blurb indicating the Eagles hired Matt Patricia as a senior defensive assistant surfaced on the team’s website Thursday afternoon, Tim McManus of ESPN.com tweets, but it was soon taken down. But the veteran defensive coach is still on track to join the Eagles’ staff.
Nick Sirianni said (via ESPN.com’s Field Yates) the Eagles are moving toward a Patricia hire. The two-stint Patriots assistant and former Lions head coach emerged on the Eagles’ radar earlier this offseason. While a Patriots return also looked to remain in play for Patricia, he appears on the verge of joining a third team’s staff soon.
Patricia, 48, has worked for only the Patriots and Lions throughout his 19-year NFL career. His Lions HC stint did not last through its third season, and the veteran defensive coach’s return to New England brought one of the stranger chapters in recent coaching history. Bill Belichick eschewed a true Josh McDaniels OC replacement and instead gave Patricia offensive play-calling duties, a responsibility the assistant reluctantly accepted. The results, as expected, led to another shakeup on the Pats’ staff.
Belichick’s Patricia hire led to a sophomore regression from Mac Jones and played a role in the Belichick-Jones relationship deteriorating. Jones and Brian Hoyer voiced issues with the Patriots’ plan of putting Patricia and Joe Judge in charge of the offense, which dropped from 15th in 2021 to 26th last season. The Pats hired Bill O’Brien to pick up the pieces and are keeping Judge. But Patricia’s Lions contract helped the Pats keep him on staff. With the Detroit HC deal having expired, the longtime Belichick assistant entered an uncertain offseason.
The Broncos interviewed Patricia for their defensive coordinator gig and considered him for another staff position, but the team did not make a hire. That looks set to lead Patricia to Philadelphia. This will be an interesting fit due to the Eagles’ decision to extend Darius Slay. The Pro Bowl cornerback feuded with his then-HC during their Detroit overlap. Slay has not indicated the sides have repaired their relationship.
Patricia’s detractors and his odd 2022 aside, he brings considerable experience in having spent nine seasons as either a defensive coordinator or head coach (and one memorable year as an OC). Patricia served as the Pats’ DC during their 2014 and ’16 Super Bowl-winning seasons. Like most Belichick assistants given HC opportunities, Patricia failed upon receiving that chance. He went 13-29-1 with the Lions. But the Eagles lost two-year DC Jonathan Gannon this offseason. Consultant Vic Fangio also left for the Miami DC position, and Dennard Wilson — the team’s two-year secondary coach who was in contention to replace Gannon — also left. Should this Philly deal be completed, Patricia will work under Sean Desai, who will begin his second season on the coordinator level.
“His resume speaks for itself. It gives you a great mind in there who’s done it at the highest level,” Sirianni said of Patricia (via The Athletic’s Zach Berman). “It gives you a great ability to bounce ideas off of with the defensive staff, and then it gives me a former head coach to bounce ideas off of as well.”
According to sources who spoke on condition of their remaining anonymous, Patricia will be tasked with driving Slay and others to quit football.
Seems like Philly kinda guy……
Ya, he’s fat
I can understand Belichick’s desire to re-hire his failed head coaches – but they should be low-budget “staff assistants”, not forced into big-time OC/DC/ST roles where they never had experience. As for Patricia, he seems to be a very unlikable person, thus he might know defense, but any Eagles talent that can’t take his “style” is likely to walk…
Adam Schefter just confirmed this hire on Twitter. His official title is “senior defensive assistant”. The dynamic between him and Slay should be interesting to watch.
Patricia’s actual job will be scouting out the tri-state area to find the best locations for ordering Philly cheese steaks.
Is that according to unnamed sources? 🙂
A coach should not be wearing a backwards hat. Would never hire a guy like that I’m sorry you have to show some class.
The assumption is that Desai is highly thought of throughout the league and will be in the next round of HC hot list candidates, so get an undervalued experienced SB winning coordinator on staff now with a sham title who is really the succession plan. If Desai is supposed to be just a 5 year DC, you dont go out and hire a guy with a bigger resume looking to go back to being a DC as his subordinate. However, the defense has to actually now be really really good for this to work.
Anything to get him out of New England.
The question for the Eagles is how much that OC stint helped make Patricia better defensively. I couldn’t imagine that it could be anything but extremely helpful. Does it do enough to make me confident in him as a coach? I honestly don’t know. He seemed to do good work in New England when he had a clear cut system to follow/tinker with, but when he was running the ship in Detroit his inflexibility cost him a lot of games and goodwill. Patricia doesn’t seem to be as confident, unsurprisingly so, and the one thing that a coach cannot be is indecisive (see: Hackett, Nathaniel).
Going back to the Patriots should have helped, but that O.C. stint was the worst move that could have happened for that (with a similarly inexperienced offensive coach in Joe Judge as an assistant). So, again, with all that said, the question is: how much value does Patricia have now? Is that unique experience enough to outweigh whatever personal issues he has? The Eagles will find out, but I doubt that we, as outside fans, will really know what this hire brought to the table in Philadelphia.
“The question for the Eagles is how much that OC stint helped make Patricia better defensively” Hahahahahaha
Matt Patricia was/is a baffoon. The Lions have a long history of Baffoons (see Matt Millen era).
…a buffoon, right?
I’m not saying that I trust Patricia as a coach, not without seeing some better results. However, it’s hard to believe that he came out of that New England experiment without ANY sort of knowledge gained. It came at the Patriots’ and Mac Jones’ expense, but surely it gave Patricia new perspective. If not…well, I’m not sure what COULD help him. The other part of this is that Philly will be transitioning to a new coordinator as well.
Patricia may only be an assistant, but he probably will be relied on more than he otherwise would be. That could be good or bad, depending on the above. Has he learned from his mistakes in Detroit, and is he able to use that bizarre O.C. experiment to his advantage?
Take a look at all of the Belichick disciples and how they have fared as a HC elsewhere. The one with the greatest success was Bill O’Brien.
I stand by my Baffoon assessment of Matt Patricia until he has proven himself otherwise.
I was just hinting at the spelling.
Right – very good. Patricia still doesn’t deserve a correctly spelled insult.
Don’t the Eagles wanna win?
I bet Darius Slay is just thrilled to have Matty Patty back in the fold. That clown traded him to the Eagles when he was the Lions HC.