FOXBORO, Mass. — There aren’t many NFL players like New England Patriots linebacker Jerod Mayo and safety Devin McCourty.
Mayo and McCourty became Patriots captains in just their second seasons — 2009 and 2011, respectively — and head coach Bill Belichick praised both players for the amount of respect they quickly garnered.
“It’s unusual to see players — a little bit unusual, I think — to see players be a captain in their second year,” Belichick said Monday at Gillette Stadium. “I think that takes kind of a special person to earn that much respect in that short amount of time. Jerod did that, Devin did that. It’s really not that long of a list. But I think everybody looks up to them, not just the younger players, although they certainly do.”
The Patriots will need that leadership on defense with nose tackle Vince Wilfork gone. The Patriots elected not to pick up Wilfork’s 2015 contract option, then he signed with the Houston Texans.
Mayo is recovering from an injury that knocked him out for his second consecutive season after just six games. Mayo didn’t play Thursday night in the Patriots’ preseason opener against the Green Bay Packers, but Belichick said the eighth-year pro is getting healthier every practice.
“Jerod’s made progress every day from last year in the offseason, even during the season when he was working every day in his rehab into the offseason to this spring to this training camp,” Belichick said. “He’s — nobody works harder than Jerod does. I think he’s making progress day by day. We’ll see where that gets to, but he’s coming along, we’ve asked him to do a little bit more either by volume or the amount of work he does or maybe we’ve increased the intensity of it a little bit in the 2 1/2Â weeks we’ve been in training camp. He’s handled all of those well. We’ll just keep going here and see how it goes.”
Thumbnail photo via David Butler II/USA TODAY Sports Images
