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Just a couple days after officially hiring Matt Patricia as their new head coach, the Detroit Lions have finalized some other additions to the staff, including new defensive coordinator Paul Pasqualoni.
The team officially released a list of all of the new assistant coaches joining Patricia in Detroit, headlined by Pasqualoni. The 68-year-old most recently served as the defensive line coach at Boston College after various assistant coaching stints in the NFL. He was the head coach at the University of Connecticut from 2011 to 2013.
Prior to landing with the Patriots, Patricia received his first Division I assistant job from Pasqualoni at Syracuse, so their relationship runs deep.
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Patricia spoke fondly of Pasqualoni in the week leading up to the Super Bowl with Dave Birkett of the Detroit Free Press:
“It was obviously a great opportunity for me to go home. Syracuse was home for me, and when you grew up in that area there really is no professional sports, so at the time it was Syracuse football, Syracuse basketball, that’s kind of what it is out there. And to have that opportunity to go back and then just to see kind of Coach Pasqualoni’s, the way that he handled the team, the way that he coached the team and the way that just everything was in order, very much sort of how you would want a football team run.”
Offensively, Patricia and the Lions are sticking with Jim Bob Cooter as their coordinator. Last season, he received a lot of interest as franchises searched for new head coaches, but he ultimately stayed in Detroit with Jim Caldwell. Matthew Stafford and other members of the offense vouched for him when Caldwell was let go, so the team ultimately decided to keep him and preserve some continuity on that side of the ball.
