Patriots have safety in numbers
But who’s going to replace Devin McCourty?
Welcome to 7 Patriots training camp questions!
Each day leading up to the start of camp, the Herald will explore one of the biggest questions facing the Pats this summer. Several pertain to the offense, which welcomed back Bill O’Brien this offseason and added JuJu Smith-Schuster and Mike Gesicki. Other questions cover the defense and special teams, units that might rely heavily on rookies and must overcome the loss of longtime captain Devin McCourty.
Once the Patriots hit the practice field, here’s what they must learn before the season kicks off versus Philadelphia on Sept. 10.
The New England Patriots understand better than anyone that there is no single replacement for retired safety and defensive captain Devin McCourty, but players seem optimistic about the team’s approach to filling the gap at free safety as they head into a season without the threetime Super Bowl champion for the first time since 2009.
Amazingly, Week 1 will only be the sixth game New England has played without McCourty since the twotime All-Pro was selected in the first round of the 2010 NFL Draft. There is no player on the Patriots’ roster with McCourty’s combination of leadership, range, durability, dependability and understanding of New England’s defense. So, instead, the Patriots were taking an all-hands-on-deck approach this spring without an obvious 1-for-1 fill-in.
McCourty was the first one to float out the possibility that no one player would be taking over his spot at free safety in a series of tweets shortly after his retirement.
“Everyone in NE wants a big name signed for safety but Dug Pep and AP have played GREAT BALL. LET THEM COOK !!!!! ” McCourty tweeted about Kyle Dugger, Jabrill Peppers and Adrian Phillips.
“Nah I think they have a chance to be better…everyone knew where I was going to be…with this group no one know who will be where….I’m excited to watch them,” McCourty replied to a tweet asking if he believed New England needed “someone in your role.”
Time will tell if McCourty was correct in his humility. The Patriots used players from multiple different positions, including safeties Peppers, Dugger, Phillips and Joshuah Bledsoe, linebacker Marte Mapu, cornerbacks Jonathan Jones and Myles Bryant and versatile defensive back Jalen Mills, at the free safety spot in front of reporters during OTAs and minicamp.
One source called the Patriots’ approach to replacing McCourty, a work in progress, noting there will be some “trial and error” in testing players out at free safety in training camp and the preseason.
“I think personally that now, you kind of knew where Devin was going to be most of the time,” Peppers said during minicamp. “He inserted, he rotated down, but for the most part you knew 80-to90 percent of the time he was going to be in the post. Now you don’t know where anybody’s going to be. One play it could be (Dugger), it could be me, it could be (Phillips), Mills. Marte could drop back from the linebacker position. It’s a lot of different things that we could do, a lot of different tools the coaches can play with. It’s up to us to make it look good, communicate and get the job done.”
It sounds like a great plan in premise. The Patriots can confuse offenses by making their defense look one way and switch it up at the last second by rotating some versatile pieces at the snap. And they can follow an NFL trend by utilizing more split-safety looks to take the pressure off of one player. But in practice someone still needs to be that last line of defense.
And for anyone old enough to remember that period between Patriots Super Bowl runs, the free safety position plagued New England’s defense, especially in 2011, when they used the following players at that free safety position: James Ihedigbo, Patrick Chung, Sergio Brown, Ross Ventrone, Josh Barrett, Sterling Moore, Nathan Jones and even Matthew Slater. The Patriots allowed a league-leading 87 passing plays of 20 yards or more that year even while making Super Bowl XLVI. The issues in the secondary precipitated McCourty’s full-time move from cornerback to free safety in 2013, and New England’s defensive backfield has been a strength ever since.
The Patriots had one of the NFL’s most efficient defenses in 2022 and brought back all of the key players from that unit — other than their last line of defense. You have to go all the way back to 2012 to truly know what a defense without McCourty looks like. And it wasn’t pretty. New England has to hope their plan is better this season, otherwise it could tank an otherwise promising unit.