FOXBOROUGH, Mass. — In the bowels of Gillette Stadium, the New England Patriots’ locker room is a mostly serious place when it’s open to media.
Unlike many NFL locker rooms, there is no music, just the din of players, staff and reporters bustling about the confines of the long, narrow room. Lockers have handsome, dark-wood doors that spell “PATRIOTS” when they’re closed. Players keep their spaces tidy and above their lockers are LED screens with each player’s name, an artful element that resembles a movie marquee, but also a useful one that can easily be changed at any moment.
This is where one of the greatest sports dynasties of our lifetime resides. It’s a serious place where serious men do serious work. And yet, there are some smiles and chuckles when I asked players about Matt Patricia, who faces his old team today for the first time.
The Patriots’ de facto offensive coordinator was fired 11 games into his third season with the Detroit Lions and left Detroit with a 13-29-1 record and a reputation as a big, old meanie who was despised throughout the organization because, after all, a few tweets from a handful of cast-off players should be taken as gospel, right?
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I wanted to know what Patriots players thought of Patricia’s hard-nosed approach to coaching that sometimes included unsparing, vulgar criticism in team meetings. That was a sore point with some Lions players who felt disrespected by Patricia’s verbal attacks. He once chastised cornerback Darius Slay in a meeting for figuratively worshipping an opposing receiver by posting pictures of him on social media.
“Well, I can’t speak to other guys’ experience with him,” said Matthew Slater, a 10-time Pro Bowl special-teams ace and receiver. “Each player has their own personal experience with a coach, so I don’t want to take away from that. But for me, Matt’s always coached me hard. He’s always been brutally honest.”
Slater punctuated his understatement with a little laugh.
“And that’s something that I’ve appreciated about playing for him,” he said. “You always know where you stand and you always know what’s expected of you. And I think for me, personally, as a player, that’s something that I want and that’s something I’ve always gotten from him.”
Running back Damien Harris called Patricia a “great coach” who arrives each day with a “positive mindset” and “positive attitude.” He seemed unable to fathom another way of coaching than Patricia’s tough approach.
“Um, I mean, he’s our coach and he coaches us hard and we play hard,” he said. “So that’s what it’s got to be. The coaches got to coach us hard and the players got to go out there and play hard.”
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Center David Andrews hunched over at this locker, looking at his phone and clearly spent from a long practice. I wanted to speak with Andrews because, like Slater, he was with the Patriots during Patricia’s previous tour as defensive coordinator.
“I think, look, as a coach your job is to get the best out of your players,” Andrews said. “I think Matty wants the best for us. He wants to see us go succeed and excel.
“You know, he’s obviously grown up in this system just like I have. So, as a coach, you got to hold people accountable. And we as players have to hold ourselves accountable.”
This is the fine line coaches tread. When is it time to be hard? When do you have to be harder? When is it time to ease up? Different players need different approaches. When I asked Andrews whether Patricia still calls out players, he didn’t admit it outright, but suggested it was a necessity.
“I’ve had a lot of tough coaches,” center David Andrews said. “I played for one of the toughest ones in Dante Scarnecchia. So I’ve had a lot of tough coaches. Look, like I said, that’s part of being a coach, you know? If you want to let things slide, eventually those things will help you get beat.”
Andrews provided a telling example of what makes the Patriots the Patriots and how they’ve injected greatness into their DNA by plunging a long, painful needle into every player without remorse, a bandage or a lollipop.
“I’ve always found here, being a Patriot my whole life, is it’s never good enough,” the eight-year pro said. “I’ve won Super Bowls here, and the first meeting back that spring we’re sitting there watching film getting chewed out and getting corrected on a game that happened in February and it’s the middle of April, you know?
“So it’s never good enough. You have to learn, you have to always be working to improve. That’s just what I believe and how I believe the game is played.”
It really comes down to the kind of person you are. Can you accept criticism, no matter how extreme or unfair it may seem, and still try to learn from it? Can you separate the criticism from the critic?
I didn’t always agree with Patricia’s tactics with the Lions, especially at the beginning of his tenure when he made players run as a form of punishment for mistakes in practice. I’ll never forget poor Jarrad Davis jumping offside in a training camp drill, then missing three or four reps while he was running 100 yards. Davis was a model player who needed to get better and he was wasting valuable practice time being punished for jumping a snap count.
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Patricia jettisoned talented but outspoken players like Slay, Quandre Diggs and Golden Tate. Patricia inherited players who came from Jim Caldwell’s philosophy of letting players be themselves, and wanted those same players to share his team-first philosophy. It was always about the team and the overall vision for Patricia.
No player was sacred and I would bet it was a philosophy he learned from Bill Belichick, who coached the Cleveland Browns when he made the extremely unpopular decision to waive extremely popular quarterback Bernie Kosar in 1993 after he kept changing plays at the line of scrimmage. The Browns made the playoffs the next season for the first time in five years.
I agreed with Patricia’s philosophy in principal, but in practicality no coach can be this extreme and dismissive of premium players until he’s actually established himself with wins under his belt that buy him credibility.
Patricia was especially bothered by one incident with Slay. He was celebrating in the locker room after a loss because he had gotten an opposing player’s jersey, while a teammate near him wept over the loss. I really liked Slay, but I could understand Patricia’s wrath and frustration over an excellent player not showing more maturity and leadership in that moment.
Former second-round pick Jahlani Tavai joined the Patriots last year after the Lions released him in August. He’s now a special-teams player and a backup linebacker and says Patricia is the same coach and person he was in Detroit.
“He’s been great,” Tavai said. “One thing I know about Matty P. is he’s going to put all his effort into whatever is thrown at him, so I know he’s doing his thing on the offensive side.
“But being here with him has been a fun experience. I get to see where his defensive terminologies came from originally. It’s been awesome.”
As for the tough approach, Tavai smiled about that, too.
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“I mean, that’s anybody,” he said. “If he’s got a higher standard than a player, then that player’s got some stuff to work on. He just wanted the best for us players and, I mean, it’s just part of football, you know?
“I’m sure anybody who’s played football knows how many coaches be screaming in your ear over little details. He was just doing his job and trying to make sure that organization was on the improvement side, especially being out there, it was a tough few years.”
Even if Slay, Diggs and others took shots at Patricia the day of his firing. The feeling wasn’t mutual among all Lions players. “I think he’s a great coach, period, whatever it is,” Lions guard Jonah Jackson told the Free Press. “I had a lot of respect for him.”
Patricia was not available for comment this week, noting that he only speaks on alternate weeks. This is a calculated move by Belichick. By not naming Patricia the offensive coordinator, the Patriots avoided the Rooney Rule of having to interview two external minority candidates and avoided the requirement of having Patricia conduct a news conference every week. You see, while most of the world plays checkers, some NFL coaches play chess, but Belichick plays 3D chess and stays up all night practicing.
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So, partly for some comic relief, here’s my exchange Friday with Belichick, who acted as though he would have preferred to chew on shards of glass rather than talk about Patricia.
I asked how Patricia’s time in Detroit changed him and perhaps made him a better coach.
Belichick: “You’d have to ask him that.”
So I asked Belichick to answer from his perspective as Patricia’s boss.
Belichick: “He did a great job when he was here. He’s done a great job the last two years.”
When coaches don’t want to discuss other people or external circumstances, I ask them to compare a similar situation they went through. So I asked Belichick to explain how his time in Cleveland made him a better coach.
Belichick: “Yeah, I don’t know. I’m sure it’s different for each person. I’m not really sure. After you’ve been a head coach you have a head coach perspective that you don’t have before you’re a head coach. I’ll definitely say that.
“But I don’t know. That would be hard for me to compare my experience in Cleveland to somebody else’s somewhere else. I don’t know if the circumstances would be the same, similar, or totally different. I have no idea.”
Soon after that, Boston reporters tried to pin down Belichick on whether Patricia is actually the offensive coordinator. Belichick, perhaps seeing the specter of Dan Rooney standing in the back of the room as well as forthcoming league punishment over the wrong answer, bristled at the questions. Frankly, I’m disappointed Belichick hasn’t found a way to demote himself to Football Adviser/Ball Boy Captain in order to avoid talking to reporters.
This game means a lot to two 1-3 teams. One has championship pedigree and wants to avoid missing the playoffs for the second time in three years. One has a coach who wants to keep his seat from growing warmer.
Then there’s Patricia. Slater said he assumed this game means a lot to Patricia, even if he hasn’t mentioned it. I doubt he’ll have players carry him off the field, like Jim Schwartz in 2014, if the Patriots win. But I’m sure this is more than just another game to Patricia, whose style maybe hasn’t changed much but he’s back in a place where it’s at least appreciated.
“Matt and I have a great relationship and I’ve known him for 15 years now,” Slater said. “So I’ll always love Matthew and what he stands for. I think when you get a chance to kind of leave the nest and run your own show you learn a lot, and he certainly has learned a lot. And I think it’s given him great perspective, a greater appreciation for just the opportunities that we all have to be in this league.
“But at his core, he’s the same guy. He’s the same guy I’ve always loved, the same guy I’ve always respected. And thankful to have a chance to be working with him again.”
Contact Carlos Monarrez: cmonarrez@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @cmonarrez.