Matt Patricia has called defensive plays for the past eight years, doing so in New England during two seasons before he became the Patriots’ DC. But he will cede that responsibility in his first season with the Lions.
Detroit’s new head coach will delegate play-calling duties to new Lions DC Paul Pasqualoni, Patricia said (via Kyle Meinke of MLive.com).
While Patricia will still weigh in on defensive and offensive plays at times, the primary responsibilities for defensive calls will go to Pasqualoni. An on-and-off NFL assistant over the past 13 years whose primary connection to Patricia was at Syracuse in the early 2000s, Pasqualoni initially hired Patricia as a graduate assistant when he was the program’s head coach. He’ll now receive his biggest NFL assignment since 2010.
“Coach Pasqualoni will be calling the defense, and he’ll be running it from that standpoint,” Patricia said this week. “In general, I’ll call whatever I need to offensively, defensively or special teams. But yeah, he’ll be in charge.”
The 68-year-old assistant coached Boston College’s defensive line over the past two seasons and served as an NFL DC from 2008-10, with the Dolphins and Cowboys. The Lions ranked 19th in defensive DVOA in Teryl Austin‘s final season.
Some may think this is a weird decision by Patricia but he’s watched belichek for years and learned that he needs to delegate but put in his opinion whenever he feels necessary just like the defensive minded belichek did with him for years. So he is trying to create a similar structure
Attempting to mirror the Belichick approach this early on is the wrong approach. Patricia has to establish his own identity as a leader to earn the respect of players and other coaches. Delegating tasks has value, but that is best done after you have worked with the staff for a while and have gotten to understand their thinking on various matters.
I see a recipe here for someone getting thrown under the bus if things go badly and that is not how the Lions should be moving forward.
The defensive coordinator that Patricia delegated play calling too Paul Pasqualoni actually hired Patricia when at Syracuse for Patricia’s first coaching job every and is very very close with him so it does make sense to delegate to someone he has known his whole career and some that he respects and trusts. So I’m not sure where you are coming from there