Takeaways from Detroit Lions head coach Matt Patricia this morning

The devil is in the details

He said that his focus is primarily aimed at making sure that the practices are running smoothly. “Where the bodies are moving, from period to period and from coach to coach.” The training camp set up is a little bit different from OTAs as the team prepares to ramp up the level of physicality in the next few days. The team also needs to adjust to the new staff’s expectations.

“The biggest part of that when you have 90 guys out on the football field is trying to work in a cohesive manner,” he elaborated. “Its something that’s very different for the players, the coaches: probably something they haven’t seen before just from my standpoint and what I expect.”

Mechanically running a football practice is similar to herding cats, particularly when everyone has been out of the building for a time. The hardest part, according to Patricia is “getting everybody to move from drill to drill quickly, getting everybody to be in the right place at the right time, knowing what they’re doing in that drill”

Each day is about adding to the team’s skill set, getting them one step closer to where they need to be. “We should be better in a week, and hopefully in a month, and then as we look at September through October our whole goal, big picture goal, will be to improve as the course of the season goes.”

The Patriots, Patricia’s former team, have been known as one of the best-prepared squads in the NFL. In recent years there have been personnel deficiencies on the roster, but the coaches get the players prepared. Recently, Travis Kelce of the Philadelphia Eagles gave Patricia a sizable complement.

“The last defense we had seen was Minnesota’s, and we were like, ‘These dudes have got some players,'” Kelce said. “Then we see (the Patriots) and we’re like, ‘These dudes have got some…coaches.'”

How Patricia achieves this is setting goals. “I try to coach them up every single day. on specific details or points of emphasis,” Patricia said. “They change day by day.” By setting goals and achieving them, The Patriots have built teams that were greater than the sum of their parts. Patricia has been no small part of that.

More than being mentally prepared, the players need to be able to physically express what they’ve learned. It is about “trying to take the transfer from the classroom to the meeting room or the classroom to the field,” according to Patricia. “That’s really a huge part of the game for us.”