It appears the New England Patriots really wanted to test the limits of "jack of all trades, master of none" during the 2022 season.
Things were pretty disastrous for Bill Belichick's squad last season, as they failed to make the playoffs due in large to their dysfunction on the offensive side of the ball. The man primarily saddled with responsibility? Matt Patricia.
Patricia was thrown into the fire in 2022. Belichick chose him as the Patriots' offensive play caller in a year that the team was looking to implement a brand-new system and the results were about what you'd expect.
The shift to leading an offense put another notch in Patricia's belt, as he had spent the previous 17 seasons as a defensive assistant, defensive coordinator, head coach and senior football advisor.
And oh yeah, apparently he was doing interior design along the way.
At least that's according to NBC Sports Boston's Phil Perry, who revealed the nugget when presenting the finding of his research on the NFLPA's survey of workplace conditions.
"The (football facility) project has been in the works for some time. Matt Patricia, it's my understanding, played a key role in spearheading how the football ops space would be designed," Perry wrote. "His job within the organization changed drastically going into last season when he went from a do-it-all assistant for Bill Belichick (including helping oversee the layout of new facility space) to the team's de-facto offensive coordinator."
On the surface, this might sound a bit crazy. Patricia is a football coach, after all. He also attended Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and got a degree in aeronautical engineering, so there's got to be something in his brain that related to the design of the football operations space.
Then again, one could have used similar reasoning to why he could handle the role of offensive play caller, and we all know how that turned out. Maybe the Patriots should take a look at his ideas to avoid another poor grade on the NFLPA's survey.
