The Eagles won’t need a secret weapon Sunday to beat the Patriots.
Their weapons are known, and they are dangerous: Jalen Hurts, A.J. Brown, DeVonta Smith and Dallas Goedert. Oh, and don’t forget the defensive line that averaged more than a sack per quarter last season and has since added two first-round picks.
If, however, the Eagles did require a secret weapon, his name might be senior defensive assistant Matt Patricia.
Stop laughing.
Patricia’s knowledge of the Patriots’ football operations is deeper and more detailed than any other coach to face them in the Bill Belichick era. No ex-assistant has returned to face Belichick with coordinator experience on offense and defense, not to mention his year as a Senior Football Adviser. However disastrous last season was — and it was a football hellscape of ugly penalties and hideous turnovers — Patricia still knows the Pats’ playbooks and personnel intimately.
Patricia learned at Belichick’s knee for 16 years, including six as a coordinator or advisor. It was at that same knee he took a public spanking from every media analyst and radio caller who watched his bland, bumbling offense last season. That, according to sources, is among the chief reasons Patricia left.
People close to Patricia recognized the toll the season and criticism took on him by early January. Weeks later, Patricia didn’t return to the facility with the rest of the coaches to begin offseason preparations. In fact, several Patriots staffers seemed to greet him with surprise in mid-March when Patricia made a public appearance at Devin McCourty’s retirement press conference.
Not long after that, Patricia flew off to Philly.
The problem now, with the Eagles visiting for Sunday’s season opener, is Patricia knows how Belichick thinks. He knows because Belichick taught him how to think. And it’s how Patricia helped shape Bill O’Brien’s thinking in his first days as a Patriot.
“I learned a lot from Matt when I worked with him years ago,” O’Brien said Tuesday. “I came in as a quality control (coach in 2007), and Matt helped teach me a lot about being a quality control coach here in New England. We have a lot of respect for Matt.”
As damning as recent history has treated Patricia (who, make no mistake, has always played a leading role in his own demise), it’s been similarly unkind to Belichick versus his ex-assistants.
Brian Flores won four of his last five battles with the Patriots as the Dolphins’ head coach. Titans coach Mike Vrabel knocked Belichick and Tom Brady out of their last playoff game together in January 2020. A year earlier, Vrabel ripped the Pats by 24 in Nashville.
And months before that loss, Patricia managed the same with his toothless Detroit Lions on Sunday Night Football, 26-10.
Institutional knowledge of your opponent matters. It’s why teams mine the minds of players and coaches who played for their next opponent every week of every season.
“There’s always somebody on the other team that we know, or somebody that’s on our team that was with somebody else,” Belichick said Monday on WEEI. “So, it’s pretty common in the National Football League.”
The question is: how much does it matter? Theoretically, Patricia should weaponize his institutional knowledge against the Patriots better than ex-assistant ever has. He can pour everything he learned, taught, observed and installed over a decade and a half of Foxboro into the Eagles offense, defense and coaching staff.
That’s a lot of stuff! But in reality, the Patriots couldn’t care less.
“I doubt it will help much,” one source told the Herald. “We’re a game-plan team in every phase.”
“I have a ton of respect for Matt. Matt’s helped us win a lot of games (and) championships here,” Belichick began Monday, “but Sunday’s game will be about the Eagles and the Patriots.”
Added Pats safety Adrian Phillips: “We change pretty much every week. So you might feel like you’ve got us down to a tee, but I don’t know if, since I’ve been here, I’ve ever been in a game where the offense knows exactly what we’re going to do.”
Phillips did confirm Patricia is surely arming the Eagles with information, and his defense will not and can not know how until the game begins. But whatever that information is, ex-Patriots running back James White isn’t sure how helpful that will be.
“(Patricia’s) gonna understand the basic principles of obviously a Bill Belichick defense, but you can tweak so many different things based on the team that you’re playing against that it doesn’t necessarily matter,” White said recently.
He continued: “I feel like, for me personally, some of those coaches don’t know as much as we think they know. Matty P coached on both sides of the ball, but when it comes to offense knowing defense and defense knowing offense, they might know some small things, but when it comes to some of the intricate details, I feel like most coaches don’t necessarily know those things, in my opinion.”
Maybe White is right. His theory, while enticing, is difficult to prove. But if the Patriots are right about Patricia’s impact, or lack thereof, we will know Sunday.
The Pats will either upset the Eagles or drop a promising nail-biter. The Eagles won’t run away with an expected blowout, their edges in talent and preparation shining as clear as the new 19-mile scoreboard of Gillette Stadium. Patricia won’t enjoy a last laugh at Belichick’s expense, and instead continue to be remembered as the defensive coach who took the keys to the offense and drove it straight the ground.
The whole notion of Patricia providing critical intelligence on the Patriots will seem downright laughable. Almost as funny as the idea seems to the Patriots right now. Just ask O’Brien.
What part of his experience helped him compete against the Patriots six times as the Texans’ head coach?
“It’s an interesting question,” O’Brien began Tuesday. “I would say none of it.”