Matt Patricia rumors bounce between New York Giants and Detroit Lions

It has been a whirlwind of a week for the Detroit Lions head coaching search and it’s only Wednesday. It all began back on Sunday when Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk reported that the Patriots are preparing for defensive coordinator Matt Patricia to leave “most likely to become the next coach of the Detroit Lions.”

From there, other reporters including Jason La Canfora jumped on the Patricia-to-Lions wave, though it was never clear if they were adding to Florio’s report or simply repurposing it.

Then, in the waning hours of Tuesday night, MMQB’s Peter King dropped a bombshell, saying that Patricia would prefer to have the Giants job over the Lions job. Of course, the interest has to be both ways for the Lions to miss out on Patricia, and by all accounts, Panthers defensive coordinator Steve Wilks was still the favorite in New York.

Then Pat Leonard of the New York Daily News took things a step further. According to Leonard, “all things point to” Patricia landing in New York:

The Daily News has learned that all signs are pointing to Matt Patricia, the New England Patriots defensive coordinator with a degree in aeronautical engineering, as the man the Giants will hire to point Big Blue back in the right direction.

However, the rest of the article doesn’t seem to suggest things are a done deal. In fact, far from it. When Leonard brings up the Lions, all he has to say is it “is not a done deal to the Detroit Lions as several reports had claimed.”

“Saying all signs point to the Giants”, while also describing the situation with the Lions as “not a done deal” seems to be playing both sides.

Then there’s Micahel Lombardi from The Ringer, who said this on his podcast:

Of course a lot can change between Sunday and now, and Lombardi, too, seems to be hedging his bets on Wednesday, saying this about Patricia:

So if anything is clear at this points it’s this: Nothing is clear.

In fact, with all of the rumors now pointing in the Giants direction, it should be worth noting that New York still had an interview on their books after all of these reports came out. Wednesday afternoon New York completed their “final” scheduled interview, meeting with former Broncos running back coach Eric Studesville:

So now that the Giants are done with interviews, we could see an end to the stalemate between Detroit and New York, but at this point, expect the unexpected.