The New England Patriots boasted one of the best secondaries in the NFL last season — posting a league-high 25 interceptions.
Bill Belichick kept core pieces of that unit with Devin McCourty, Patrick Chung, Stephon Gilmore, Jason McCourty, J.C. Jackson and Jonathan Jones. He also lost out on a couple players with the departures of Duron Harmon and Nate Ebner. To replace them, the team brought Adrian Phillips and Cody Davis in during free agency — also, drafting safety Kyle Dugger in the second round to bring youth along.
Devin McCourty, 32, spoke with Karen Guregian of the Boston Herald and discussed the incoming players.
“I like the guys (he brought in),” McCourty said. “That’s what it’s about more than anything. We’ll figure out the football and all of that. We’ve had our secondary meetings, and I really like our secondary, even the new guys. You have Myles (Bryant), and Kyle (Dugger). They’re two rookies who’ve been in the meetings recently. With AP (Adrian Phillips) and Cody (Davis), they’re guys who have come in and have been in this league for a while. So they bring in versatility, and I love how we’re always laughing and joking on the virtual calls, and text messages. I do like our group.
“I think we match fairly well personality-wise, so that’ll be fun. I think it’ll be about putting it together as a team. Virtually, what’s hard, is we haven’t been all together. We spend a good amount of time with the DBs, but like, when you’re on a virtual call, and the squad is 90 guys, you know you’re not really together. It’s a lot different than when you’re in a locker room. So we’ll still have to build that up. Our team will be whatever we are by the end of the season. We just have to be ready to work at it every day, not just a good day here, a bad day there. We’re going to have to really work at it day in and day out.”
The secondary is the deepest group on New England’s roster and it’s filled with talented veterans, along with promising youth. McCourty elaborated further on that group of veterans.
“You mean old guys (laughter)? But yeah, I think it definitely helps, because even when we sit in on virtual meetings, it’s not just all coaches-to-players,” McCourty continued. “It’s player-to-player because we have so many guys who have been in the system, that as we start to talk about things, even stuff that’s not in the playbook, we have guys with so many years of experience that can talk about playing a role in the defense … you have to use that to your advantage. When you’re older, it’s all about going and doing it.
“People don’t believe you’re going to do it year in and year out. But for a lot of the older guys, we’ve gotten to see firsthand what it looks like for a guy like Tom (Brady). Each year, it’s like he’s not going to do it again. And we got to watch him do it. So I think we have a stubborn, foolish mindset that no matter how old we get, we think we can still get better because we played with a guy, who for most of us, was 10-12 years older than us. And that was our best player. So I think for us, we still feel young, and we still feel like we can go do it. We just have to make sure we give our knowledge to the younger guys and the free agents that come from a different system, and do it the best way they can understand it.”
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