FOXBORO, Mass. — The New England Patriots labored through a month-plus of training camp just for everything to change as the summer was coming to an end.
In the last 16 days, Julian Edelman, Josh Gordon and Demaryius Thomas returned to practice, David Andrews’ season ended prematurely due to a blood clot in his lungs, and the Patriots traded for three new offensive linemen.
Brady isn’t starting from square one with Edelman, Gordon or new starting center Ted Karras, but the changes do make all that work in training camp feel like a bit of wasted time.
“It’s part of football,” Brady said Wednesday. “It’s a challenging thing, and that’s why it’s not always as fluid as you would hope it to be because you prepare for eight months for this game, and then you’re getting used to guys we haven’t really played with. Or we signed, whatever, three or four new players at the end of cuts that are backups to different positions and they don’t have any experience. Look, we’re going to try to work as hard as we can like we always do. I don’t think this team ever feels like we’re a finished product, and I don’t think we finish many practices and Coach (Bill) Belichick has been like, ‘Man, we’ve got this all figured out.’
“I think we’re trying to work at it every single day and put the time and effort and energy and commitment into it for each other, and you see how that pays off after a long season. The season’s not over in two weeks, the season’s not over at the end of September, or October, or November. It’s a long year and we’ve got to make improvements. Up to this point, I hope we’ve made a lot of improvements since the beginning of training camp, but again I think that’s going to work all the way through the entire season too. We’d like to, like I said, win these games because they’re all important and they all matter, but we’re going to have to go earn it.”
Brady did gain plenty of valuable experience with wide receivers Jakobi Meyers and Phillip Dorsett, who remain on the roster and could be key to the offense as Gordon and Thomas get squared away during training camp. It might be difficult for Brady and the offense to hit the ground running in Week 1 given the last-minute changes, however. Brady didn’t play a single preseason snap with Edelman, Gordon, Thomas or Karras, and he’s barely practiced with any of them this summer.
But if the Patriots don’t know exactly what to expect out of their own offense, then their Week 1 opponent, the Pittsburgh Steelers, definitely won’t. If the Patriots can figure it out by Week 1, then they’ll still have the upper hand at kickoff.
