What will Matt Patricia look like as Detroit Lions head coach?

With reports that Matt Patricia is a done deal for the Detroit Lions, we can move on to wondering what he’ll look like as a head coach.

With reports that the Detroit Lions will hire New England Patriots defensive coordinator Matt Patricia as their next head coach, have you started to picture him walking the sidelines wearing Lions gear?

In a world with Photoshop, that’s not so difficult and there are already edits floating around twitter.

But what will Matt Patricia really look like as a head coach? There may never have been such a hot head coaching candidate who faced questions about his physical appearance. Patricia just doesn’t seem to fit the mold in that regard thanks to his locks flowing out from his backwards hat and his wild beard.

What has come to be Patricia’s trademark style as he’s risen to notoriety as a Patriots assistant hasn’t always been the case. He was a clean-shaven,

The babyface was starting to disappear as Patricia sported a goatee and stubble for his 2006 Patriots headshot.

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Patricia started letting his hair down, literally and figuratively, in his 2010 photo, adding longer hair to his look.
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The beard was in full force in 2015, although it wasn’t quite as unkempt as it appears today.
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Should we expect Matty P, as he’s known by his players, to roll right into the Lions job looking just as he does walking off the field with the Patriots for the last time? Perhaps he’ll revert to one of the previous looks shown above?

Here is where things get interesting (insofar as you find a man’s personal grooming choices interesting). I’m not so sure Patricia’s signature style is so really much of a signature style at all. Consider this photo from 2017 training camp.

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There’s Matt, there’s the beard…just, smaller, more tame.

Could it be that Patricia just doesn’t have time, or care to give time, to things like shaving, trimming a beard, or even getting a haricut? So football focused and obsessed, that matters considered more trivial fall by the wayside during the season?

If I had to bet, I would expect that as a head coach Patricia will find 30 minutes or so to sit in a barber’s chair every few weeks to keep himself looking more like the training camp version of himself than the playoff version. That’s just a guess, but Lions fans shouldn’t expect to see “Wild Matt” all year, every year.