Lions hire Picucci as offensive quality control assistant

New Lions head coach Matt Patricia has added another assistant coach to his staff,  hiring Brian Picucci as an offensive quality control assistant.

Picucci has more than 20 years of coaching experience, mostly at smaller-division college programs, with an emphasis on the running game. He spent the last two years at Maine, where he served as the offensive line/run game coordinator and running backs coach.

The bulk of his coaching career was spent in two stints at Massachusetts, where he worked alongside current Michigan defensive coordinator Don Brown and helped lead the Minutemen to a Division I-AA national championship in 1998 and a national runner-up finish in 2006.

But he's also one of several coaches on Patricia’s staff with ties to Syracuse, where Picucci played fullback from 1989-93 in the same backfield with David Walker, the Lions' current running backs coach. Paul Pasqualoni, whom Patricia hired to be his defensive coordinator in Detroit, also was the Syracuse head coach for Picucci's last two years there.