FOXBORO, Mass. — Welcome back, football fans. Training camp is upon us.
Here are a few notes and nuggets from Wednesday’s New England Patriots media session as the team prepares for its first camp practice Thursday morning:
— Patriots defensive coordinator Matt Patricia wasn’t willing to chat about his infamous Roger Goodell clown T-shirt, which the NFL commissioner reportedly still is ticked off about.
“I mean, right now, it’s all about training camp,” Patricia told reporters, via the Boston Herald. “We’re here. We’re getting ready to go. So … my focus is our guys, getting ready, making sure we have some good meetings here this afternoon and making sure we have a productive day, so that’s kind of where we’re at.”
Patricia rocked the bright blue shirt, made by Barstool Sports, as he exited the Patriots’ team plane following their Super Bowl victory in February. ProFootballTalk’s Mike Florio reported last week Goodell “continues to be miffed” about the coach’s fashion choice, which some have speculated could affect Patricia’s chances of earning a head-coaching job in the future.
— Matthew Slater offered a tongue-in-cheek review of Bill Belichick’s “Nantucket Magazine” spread, which featured numerous photos of the Patriots coach and his girlfriend, Linda Holliday, strolling around the island.
“I think that was a tremendous opportunity to highlight his skills, abilities and good looks,” Slater said during his afternoon news conference. “So good for him. It looks like he had a good time with that, and I’m sure our fans appreciate that side of him, as do we the players.”
— Slater, the Patriots’ special teams captain, is entering his 10th NFL season, a fact he called “humbling.”
“To be on the brink of 10 seasons is something that I don’t take for granted,” the 31-year-old said.
Slater still has a long way to go to catch his father, however. Jackie Slater, a Hall of Fame offensive tackle, was a true iron man, playing 20 seasons for the Los Angeles/St. Louis Rams from 1976 to 1995.
“I guess I’m half the man my dad was at this point, which is pretty cool,” the younger Slater joked. “I mess with him about that. It’s an exciting time.”
— Slater, fellow co-captain Devin McCourty and offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels all stressed how irrelevant Super Bowl LI is to the Patriots at this point. Slater and McCourty also vehemently squashed the notion of the Patriots going 19-0 this season, calling the hype “foolish,” “disrespectful” and “ludicrous.”
Here’s what the three had to say about the team’s current mindset:
Slater: “You’ve got to leave the past in the past. When it comes to successes or failures in this league, you have to be able to have a short memory and move on. We understand that anything that’s been done in the past has no bearing on what we do moving forward. It’s important for us to remind ourselves of that each and every day that we come to work. We have to prove ourselves all over again as individuals, and we have to prove ourselves all over again as a team. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, this league will humble you quickly if you don’t maintain that mindset.”
McCourty: “If you get a chance to walk into one of Bill Belichick’s meetings, you won’t have a hard time figuring that out. We start off every year kind of the same and Bill will put us through the ringer and have all different things that we need to do as a team and build upon. Since I’ve been here, I would say that’s one thing we’ve never really had to struggle with coming from him.”
McDaniels: “Well, we never pick up where we left off, that’s for sure. … The biggest thing is, even though you have a lot of familiar faces back, you start so far below where you ended the year prior. Every season is the same thing. You’d love for it to be able to not be the case, but there’s going to be a lot of things that we’re going to get angry or upset about the next few weeks that you’d hope maybe wouldn’t happen, but that’s the nature of this game. It’s very difficult.”
Thumbnail photo via Michael Madrid/USA TODAY Sports Images
