Matt Patricia returns to RPI to visit students prior to Military Ball
TROY, NY » It’s no secret that every college likes to show off their most successful alumni. When you think of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), engineers, programmers, scientists, researchers or even astronauts might come to mind.
Matt Patricia, a member of RPI’s Class of 1996, is the head coach of the Detroit Lions and he returned to campus for a tour and to address students on Friday afternoon, ahead of being the keynote speaker at the Military Ball later that night in Troy.
“It’s very cool. I haven’t been back to school in a long time. It definitely looks different, but it feels the same. There’s a lot of work going on, we were in some of the labs this morning, watching the kids work on their projects and dive into the new technology and some of the things that they’re doing. It takes you back into what you were doing and some of the things
they’re doing now and how much more advanced it is. It’s very exciting,” said Patricia.
While he now has the head coaching job with the Lions, the bulk of Patricia’s success came as part of one of the most prolific dynasties in NFL history. In 2004, he joined Bill Belichick’s coaching staff on the New England Patriots, as an offensive assistant coach. They won the Super Bowl in his first year with the team. After that he would go on to linebackers’ coach and defensive coordinator.
After losing the 2018 Super Bowl to the Philadelphia
Eagles, he was offered the head coaching job in Detroit. While with New England, the Patriots went 175-46 in the regular season and 21-10 in the postseason, attaining 3 championships in the process. In two seasons at the helm for the Lions, he has a 9-22-1 overall record, although in his defense, it’s going to be pretty difficult to repeat the success of New England with any other franchise.
Patricia was invited to speak at Friday night’s Military Ball.
“It’s something that’s really important to me and my family and of course I wanted to come back and do all the other stuff too, see the academic side and the athletic building,” he said. “RPI means a ton to me. The relationships
I have that we built here, those are critical times of your lives when you’re here and it’s great just to be back. I’m very flattered, very humbled by the openarm treatment that I have here.”
He was asked what advise he would most like to impart on students at RPI today. His answer was to take full advantage of everything you learn at the school and using that to be successful.
“What you learn here is how to succeed, how to problem solve and how to find answers to every situation. How to turn that into success for yourself, your team, company or whatever it is,” said Patricia.
Many of the current players on RPI’s football team were in the audience as Patricia spoke about his experiences to students. He spoke about how he always enjoyed the X’s and O’s part of the game and how the amount of pressure he has had changed, as he transitioned from being a player to a coach.
“Pressure as a player I would describe as nervousness, then you get into the game and everything kind of takes over from there. As a coach for me, it’s more of being constantly worried that my players are prepared, so that they can go play the game, so they can go out and do everything possible to give themselves a chance to be successful on the field and that’s a different sort of pressure.”
One of his favorite memories was being part of RPI’s 1992 football program, when they were able to defeat Union College. “There’s a lot of great memories here. Football wise, I remember when we beat Union for the first time, being able to bring the shoes back home, which hadn’t been done in a very long time. I remember that was a crazy, crazy game and huge for the school.”