Lucien out to catch on
Injuries to WRs may open door
FOXBORO — Whether there is space on the roster for wide receiver Devin Lucien will depend on a lot of things. Who is available to go might be the biggest one as the Patriots’ wide receiving corps has taken its share of bumps and bruises before the preseason games have even started.
Danny Amendola and Malcolm Mitchell haven’t participated in team drills since getting dinged up in the first practice of training camp. Chris Hogan wore a bag of ice on his right knee Wednesday and a compression sleeve yesterday. Julian Edelman tweaked his lower leg Wednesday, but it wasn’t clear yesterday if there were any ill effects due to the veterans getting a day off. And Matthew Slater and Cody Hollister also missed yesterday’s practice.
Lucien has avoided getting banged up and hopes what he has shown with the extra reps can pay off down the road.
“It comes with the territory. Guys in football are going to go down and it’s up to the guys that they bring in to come in and try to step up as much they can,” he said. “Hopefully I can take advantage of the opportunity and show them I can play just like those guys can.”
A seventh-round pick a year ago, Lucien spent his rookie season on the practice squad and remained in the system during the offseason.
“He knows the offense better, knows the techniques better, has trained, is in good shape, is stronger, faster, quicker, more explosive,” Bill Belichick said last Friday of his first impressions. “He’s definitely headed in the right direction.”
One of the perks of the extra reps has been finding himself on the receiving end of balls thrown by Tom Brady, more than someone who was buried on the practice squad a year ago would typically get.
“Playing with the man is a great opportunity, seriously,” Lucien said. “A lot of wide receivers have been able to play with him, but more receivers weren’t, and I’m very happy and lucky to play with that guy.”
Lucien finds himself facing a numbers crunch as the Patriots have the deepest wide receiver unit in the league with Brandin Cooks, Edelman, Hogan, Mitchell and Amendola ahead of him. Slater, the special teams captain, takes the sixth spot. The 6-foot-2, 200-pound Lucien also has to emerge as the top option among the best of the rest that includes Austin Carr and Hollister, who has been out since getting hurt on Friday.
He returned just one kickoff in college — playing three years at UCLA before going to Arizona State as a graduate transfer — but that hasn’t stopped him from being put back there alongside Dion Lewis at times.
“I would do what Bill and the coaching staff ask me to do at this point,” he said. “No one wants to spend a year on the practice squad. Even though I loved that opportunity that they gave me, that’s not what I want to do again. I just want to go out, try my best and see where everything goes after that.”