It may have been his last game in New England Michael Gallup Color Rush Jersey , and Matt Patricia wasn’t ready for it to end.

The Patriots defensive coordinator went back onto the field long after the AFC championship was over and the team had advanced to the Super Bowl for the sixth time in his tenure.

There, he tossed around a football with his son before flopping onto his back on the confetti that had fallen during the team’s celebration.

”(It was) just fun to have him out there running around and just seeing the excitement that he had to be out on the field,” Patricia said this week as he tried to maintain his focus on the Super Bowl and not his expected next step: as head coach of the Detroit Lions. ”That’s always just kind of a special little moment for myself and him and my wife.”

Most identifiable by his bushy beard, backward-facing ball cap and cargo shorts or cutoff sweatpants no matter what the weather, Patricia will be on the Patriots sideline on Feb. 4, when they face the Philadelphia Eagles in an attempt to win their sixth NFL championship.

Then he will reportedly be hired as the Lions head coach.

Patricia has declined to comment on the Detroit job other than to confirm that he ”went through the process that the NFL allows us to go through during the bye week.”

The Lions confirmed that they interviewed Patricia and reportedly informed the unsuccessful candidates, but they cannot make it official until after the Patriots are done playing.

”We’re just trying to get the win,” defensive lineman Trey Flowers said on Friday. ”That’s all it’s about here.”

But for Patricia, that’s not all it’s about.

Players say he takes a special interest in them, talking to them not just as players but also asking about their families.

”It’s not just to coach you up,” linebacker Elandon Roberts said. ”That’s a must for him. That shows what kind of man he is outside of the building. He takes pride in us as players, but he also takes pride in us as people.”

Taking a rarely followed path to the NFL, Patricia graduated from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute with four varsity letters and an Aeronautical Engineering degree.

He bounced around a few colleges in the Northeast before landing on Bill Belichick’s staff with the then-defending Super Bowl champions.

Moving up through the team’s coaching ranks Dorance Armstrong Jr. Color Rush Jersey , he became the Patriots defensive coordinator in 2012.

Before most every game, Patricia walks up to every player on the sideline and shakes his hand.

”It just lets us know he has our back,” safety Duron Harmon said. ”He has our back; we’ve got his back. It’s nothing more than just a relationship that he’s built with everybody throughout the defense.

”And when you’ve got that from your coach, knowing that he’s going to go down for you and you’re going to go down for him, it makes you want to go out there and lay it down for him.”

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Atlanta Braves pitcher Mike Foltynewicz was beginning to emerge as a top-of-the-rotation type starter when he experienced some tightness in his right tricep.

After spending 10 days on the disabled list, he will try to regain that form in the series opener against the streaking Cincinnati Reds.

Foltynewicz (5-4, 2.16 ERA) will be opposed by Cincinnati’s Tyler Mahle (6-6, 3.89) in the first game of a three-game set at SunTrust Park.

It won’t be an easy assignment for Foltynewicz. The Reds have won seven straight — 10 of their last 11 — and are coming off a sweep of the Chicago Cubs. On Sunday, the Reds scored seven runs in the seventh inning and swept the Cubs in a four-game series for the first time since 1983.

Since Jim Riggleman became the team’s manager, Cincinnati is 29-30 and the Reds have won 24 of their last 42.

The Braves and Reds split a four-game series in April in Cincinnati.

Foltynewicz has only pitched five innings in the two starts after his complete-game shutout against the Washington Nationals on June 1. He threw five scoreless innings against the New York Mets before leaving with the arm issues on June 12.

The former first-round draft choice, who was acquired from the Houston Astros in 2015, has made 14 starts this season and allowed two or fewer earned runs in 13 of them. He has had four scoreless starts. He ranks fourth in the National League in ERA.

Foltynewicz received no decision in his April 23 start against the Reds. He left after 4 2/3 innings, having allowed two runs on three hits and four walks Dalton Schultz Color Rush Jersey , with seven strikeouts. In four career starts against the Reds, he is 1-0 with a 2.31 ERA.

Mahle has been hot, going 3-0 with a 1.61 ERA over his last four starts. The Reds have won all four of his starts in June, in which he has allowed four runs in 22 1/3 innings. He beat the Detroit Tigers in his most recent start, giving up two runs and fanning eight in six innings.

“Tyler did a great job,” Riggleman said after Mahle’s last start. “It seems like we’ve got six and eight innings from a lot of our starters. You’ve got a chance to win the ballgame. When you do that, you get a chance to use your bullpen the way it should be used and a lot of times good things are going to happen.”

Mahle started against the Braves on April 24 and gave up three runs in six innings with a career-high 11 strikeouts. Mahle took a no-hitter into the seventh before losing it on a leadoff homer by Atlanta’s Freddie Freeman. The Reds eventually lost that game in 12 innings.

The Braves’ bullpen took a jolt on Sunday when closer Arodys Vizcaino was placed on the 10-day disabled list with right shoulder soreness. Vizcaino, who had not pitched since June 17, had a cortisone shot earlier in the week and still wasn’t feeling well enough to pitch by the weekend.

“His shoulder is not responding like we wanted it to,” Atlanta manager Brian Snitker said. “It was one of those situations where if he wasn’t ready to pitch (Sunday), we had to back off it and get it right, because it wasn’t working.”

Atlanta activated right-hander Evan Phillips to take Vizcaino’s spot on the roster. Phillips had 50 strikeouts in 35 innings and a 2.33 ERA for Triple-A Gwinnett.