The stars finally aligned last week for Devin and Jason McCourty to reunite and play on the same team for the first time since 2008. The twin brothers had openly pined for a reunion for years, but the timing was never right.
The Cleveland Browns planned to release Jason on Thursday before the New England Patriots came calling with a trade offer. The Patriots traded their sixth-round pick to the Browns and received McCourty and a seventh-round pick in return. The draft capital given up for McCourty was more than worth acquiring the cornerback on a team-friendly $3 million contract with no guaranteed money.
And Jason certainly didn’t mind. He told his wife he planned on signing with the Patriots if the release had gone through.
The twin brothers had begun to give up hope of ever playing together again after last offseason. Jason, who’s 27 minutes younger than Devin, was released by the Tennessee Titans and wound up signing a two-year deal with the Browns last year. He started 14 games and had one of the better seasons of his career.
“It really wasn’t a good opportunity for either side, so I think at that point, in my mind, I was like, ‘I don’t know if this thing’s ever going to happen again,'” Jason said Tuesday in a conference call with the media.
He would have had to compete with Stephon Gilmore, Malcolm Butler and Eric Rowe for playing time in New England, which is why he didn’t sign with the Patriots. With Gilmore and Butler as starters, Jason didn’t have a clear path to a significant role.
Now Jason could start in the same secondary as Devin, a safety, at cornerback across from Gilmore. He’s currently competing for that spot with Rowe.
Devin and Jason had played on the same team together from Pop Warner, with the Valley Cottage Indians, to high school, with the Saint Joseph Regional High School Green Knights, and college, with the Rutgers Scarlet Knights.
Jason left Rutgers a year earlier than Devin, because he didn’t redshirt in college, and was drafted by the Tennessee Titans in the sixth round of the 2009 NFL Draft. Devin was taken by the Patriots in the first round of the 2010 NFL Draft.
Jason played with the Titans through 2016 before hitching on with the Browns for a year. Devin has spent his entire career with the Patriots.
And now the two brothers will reunite after nine seasons apart. So, will playing together on the same field once again be seamless?
“That’s probably one of the most intriguing parts of us teaming back up at this point is we went through all those years of playing football together and now you’re almost a decade later with different experiences,” Jason said. “You’ve seen the game over the last nine years through two different lenses, so it’s going to be really interesting I think for both of us to see, sitting in meeting rooms, being on the practice field of how we see things and how differently we see them or how much alike.
“I think that’s probably going to be intriguing for the coaches, as well. I think the one really cool thing is we’re probably each other’s biggest fans and biggest critics. So, I’m very interested to see how much we can push each other to become better leaders, better players and the whole nine.”
