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Devin McCourty, the three-time Super Bowl champion, will miss the playoffs for the first time in his incredible career.
McCourty was drafted by the New England Patriots in 2010 and has been a model of consistency for the team. He’s missed five total games over the past decade and he’s the heart and soul of the defense. So, losing 22-12 to the Miami Dolphins in Week 15 was a major blow for him.
The 32-year-old discussed his feelings after the game, while trying to remain as humble as possible.
“Just got to regroup and keep fighting. It is was it is,” McCourty said, transcribed by MassLive. We’ve just got to keep fighting because that’s who you want to be as a man. We’ve got a lot of standup guys in this locker room, so we just got to keep fighting. It’s not normal around here. But we’re not doing something that’s never been don in the NFL every year. Some teams don’t make the playoffs. It is what it is. But I think as a team, as an individual, you’ve got to keep playing. You can’t take this for granted. I’ve been saying it for the last couple of weeks. We’ve got to continue to do that.”
Just speaking about today, disappointing, knowing where we were at the last two weeks and to come up short and not play the way we’re capable of playing, obviously it stinks to lose, but I think the way that we’ve played has been the most disappointing, not really giving ourselves a chance to win these last two games when we’ve had a chance for postseason play. It just hasn’t developed for us, and like I said, it just really hasn’t developed for us all year. It’s just felt like that throughout the whole season.”
McCourty wasn’t quite ready to take a step back and think about his first season without a playoff run.
“Honestly, I haven’t even thought about that. I would just say I’m frustrated now. I’m in this moment. All the other years really don’t matter. You have goals each season, so you feel how you feel in that moment. Obviously, very fortunate for all of those the years passed. But right now, all that experience, it does nothing for us, does nothing for me. Just disappointed, frustrating, whatever word you want to throw in there, I think we all feel that right now.”
You’re also kind of talking about how hard everything has been this year, whether it’s on defensive side of the offensive side hard to get stops hard to get touchdowns, why do you think that has taken place this year, why do you think it’s been you know so hard on both sides of the ball to perform the level that you used to just not getting it done?”
It’s reality and it’s something that’ll settle eventually.
“Oh, it sucks. But it is what it is. It’s the reality of the situation. You get used to being there and playing and having an opportunity to whatever you’ve got dreams of and to fall short is disappointing. We’ll take our licks and get back right on this plane ride home. But once we get back to New England, it’s time to forget about that and move on. We can’t do anything about the performance today. ”
The Patriots have the Buffalo Bills and New York Jets remaining on the schedule.
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