“Hey, guys. It’s Matt. Matt Patricia.
“You remember how I was the offensive play-caller for the Patriots last year, right? Well then you must be wondering how I got here…”
Oh, it’s quite the tragic tale, all right. In fact, the main character might once have been viewed as the hero of this particular saga only to see himself become a pencil-carrying villain in the eyes of Patriots fans everywhere.
Unfortunately, the story of Patricia’s fall from grace also sums up the Patriots’ current stay in no-man’s land all too well.
It starts off like a B-list Hollywood movie: the brilliant college offensive lineman/rocket scientist’s love of football pushes him to work his way up the NFL ranks under arguably the greatest coach in sports history until he eventually lands his own head-coaching gig.
If we could just end the film after that 2016 Super Bowl comeback against the Falcons, that’d be great.
But all the bad that’s happened since then — the abysmal 2017 Super Bowl and the Malcolm Butler benching, the train wreck in Detroit and last year’s ill-fated offensive experiment — is necessary to explain why Patricia and the Patriots are both at a crossroads.
It’s not that Patricia is an idiot. He’s clearly not. He’s a scientist and a researcher, and those skills made him attractive to a franchise that long has thrived on studying opponents and knowing details no one else does.
What’s that quote from Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War” that Bill Belichick loves: “Every battle is won before it is fought?”
Patricia’s downfall, rather, has been hubris: the arrogance to claim credit for Butler’s Super Bowl interception as a defense for him doing a terrible job as head coach of the Lions; the smugness of his dealings with media and those whose intelligence he deemed beneath his own; the specter of his involvement in the benching of Butler in the 2017 Super Bowl and Kendrick Bourne last season; and the foolish acceptance of multiple offensive jobs in 2022 that he wasn’t qualified for to the detriment of Mac Jones, New England’s offense and the team as a whole.
(That, and he seemingly just isn’t good at calling plays or handling personnel.)
It’s not hard to see where Patricia learned that boundless pride from.
After all, who put Patricia in that position in the first place — believing somehow that any decent coach could call offensive plays and that everything would be fine as long as Jones and the offense simply did what they were told? Or the guy was part of deciding to let Tom Brady walk because apparently any top-15 quarterback can win a Super Bowl as long as the defense is good? Belichick, Patricia’s long-time boss.
Belichick’s own ego (on the football side of things at least) has caused him to stumble of late, if not outright fall. His protégé, on the other hand, is unemployed with his Lions contract up and nowhere to turn except the team that just relieved him of his offensive coaching duties.
Now, at age 48, Patricia’s NFL future is up in the air as he tries to return to his comfort zone on the defensive side of the ball. In all likelihood, he’s not getting that Broncos job, so maybe something with the Patriots (away from the sideline) could be next.
Meanwhile, Belichick and the Patriots are simply trying to remain relevant in the AFC and have an outside shot at being the AFC East’s worst team unless they improve this coming season.
All because they thought they were still the smartest guys in the room and had all the answers even though the test had changed. As it turns out, they may have even stumbled upon a failing even Sun Tzu hadn’t dreamt up: putting so much emphasis on knowing the enemy that they didn’t take the time to know themselves and their own limits — or didn’t feel they needed to. Maybe they should’ve had a little more respect for the process.
Only a few short years ago, Patricia and the Patriots were helping each other reach the highest of highs. Now, they’re both stuck in purgatory — thanks to one another. You can get away with having that level of belief bordering on (and sometimes crossing into) arrogance when you’re winning. The act runs thin the moment the gravy train stops.
That, friends, is how you turn a feel-good story into a cautionary tale.
