ALLEN PARK -- In a few hours, Matt Patricia will take the field finally in competition with the man who raised him on it.
Bill Belichick discovered Patricia as a graduate assistant at Syracuse, a few years removed from a cubicle sales job, teaching older coaches how to file their film notes on an emerging computer program called Microsoft Excel. When Patricia came on board as his offensive analyst with the Patriots in 2004, the two men met on different planes of their football ambitions -- one trying to keep it afloat and one just hoping it could get off the ground.