ROCKET MAN
Can a pencil-toting, bushy-bearded ex-scientist be head-coaching savior for Giants?
Patriots defensive coordinator Matt Patricia, who is interviewing with the Giants today, was a rocket scientist before following his heart and becoming a coach.
The game was against Albany, the duel was against its best defensive lineman, a 6-foot-5, 285pound athlete, and Matt Patricia, center for Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, was not faring well. Not faring well at all.
“We jumped out to an early lead but Matthew got smoked on the first few plays and we just barely got the plays off,’’ Ray Moran, RPI’s offensive line coach in 1992, told The Post. “People wanted the next guy in and I just said to Matthew, ‘ Look, this is only gonna go two ways. Either you’re gonna get pulled or you’re gonna do the job you were meant to do.’ ’’
Patricia was not pulled, RPI went on to win and the Albany defensive lineman did not wreck the game.
“He said to himself, ‘I’m not as big as everyone else. I got to be smarter. I’ve got to figure out another way.’ I think that is who he is,” Moran said. “He doesn’t always have the best players, people are hurt, he finds a way with the people he has. That’s what he did as a player, that’s what he does as a coach. That’s him.’’
Figuring out another way was Patricia’s lifeblood as he rose up the coaching ranks, with only one more rung in sight. The Patriots’ burly, bushy-bearded defensive coordinator will meet Friday with the Giants in Foxborough, Mass., interviewing for the head-coaching job, as will Josh McDaniels, the Patriots’ offensive coordinator.
Unlike McDaniels, Patricia has no head-coaching experience and is the most intriguing wild-card candidate. The Lions and Cardinals also want to meet with Patricia, and after 13 years in New England, the timing could be just right to make a move.
It does not take a rocket scientist to guide an NFL team, but if it did, Patricia, 43, would be set.
He has a degree in aeronautical engineering from RPI, one of the nation’s most prestigious schools. The guy is smart and for the past six years Bill Belichick entrusted the man Patriots players call “Matty P’’ to run his defense, so you know he is capable, industrious, a stickler for detail and loyal.
What no one can know is this: Can Patricia command the room? Can he inspire not only one side of the ball but an entire team? Dave Gettleman, the newly hired Giants general manager, believes today’s NFL head coach is akin to a CEO of a corporation.
“You’ve got to have someone who has that quality about him that makes people really believe in him and want to play for him,’’ Gettleman said. Is that Matt Patricia? “I just think that the thing to me about Matty P. is his consistency with his energy and passion,’’ Patriots safety Devin McCourty said Wednesday. “You’re not going to get him to lower his standards. He expects the best out of the first group we put on the field, the last group, in training camp, in the spring.
“You know, we got cursed out in the spring for giving up touchdowns in seven-on-seven red area where the ball started at the 7yard line. Matty P. came in there and he ripped us. So, I think, obviously as players, sometimes you get mad at that, but if you’re wise enough to realize that that’s what helps you become a better individual player and collectively a better defense.’’
Belichick’s disciples have not done well once they have ventured out into the head-coaching world, in part because so many of them try to be like Bill. Patricia and Belichick certainly have similarities, from their small-school roots, experience on both offense and defense, vice-grip minds and hoodie-wearing fashion sense.
“Of course he’s like Bill,” safety Trey Flowers told NBC Sports Boston. “How many years they been together? But he’s still his own man. Anyone who’s around him can tell you that.”
Joe King, the former head coach at RPI, located in upstate Troy, recalls traveling to the Syracuse area to recruit Patricia, who did not look then as he does now.
“He was clean shaven, for one thing,’’ King told The Post. This was not the scruffy, backward-scap wearing, pencil-in-back-of-right-ear Patricia of today.
“That’s something he’s developed,’’ King said. “I think it’s made him kind of a cult figure or
something like that with that look he has. I’ll be surprised if he keeps that if he does get a head job.’’
Patricia spent a fifth year at RPI, getting his master’s degree and serving as a graduate assistant in 1996 when the coaching bug bit him. Still, he figured he had to go earn a living and spent two years working at Hoffman Air & Filtration in East Syracuse, designing and selling centrifuges. He spent his free time at Liverpool High School working with the offensive linemen, and did some unpaid work at Syracuse University. Gambling on himself and his passion, he left Hoffman to become the defensive line coach at Division III Amherst and his jump onto the coaching carousel was complete.
“As tenacious as some of the other people that graduated from RPI to ‘How do I make the next smaller chip?’ or ‘ How do I make the next super computer?’ he’s doing that every day, it’s just in the athletic world,’’ Moran said. “That goes beyond X’s and O’s, it’s just like being a manager in a company. How do I make this person better when they can’t see it and how do I get them to do something they don’t really want to do?’’
No one can ever know for sure when a coordinator is ready. Some never are.
“Bill Belichick doesn’t walk into the media room and light the world on fire with the way he dresses or the way he communicates, it’s just not his focus,’’ Moran said. “Matthew in a high media market may have to deal with some other stuff, but I think he can handle any of that appropriately. I just think he’s a steal. He’s a winner. Just a winner.’’