The culture in New England has been culminating over the past 20 seasons, with Bill Belichick and Tom Brady playing a major role.
After Brady’s departure, the concern of creating a new culture was widespread among media and fans. Can the Patriots recover from Brady’s absence and create the same winning environment?
Then, Cam Newton walked through the door and halted many of those questions. Newton’s energy and ability to play at a high level came in perfect timing with the lack of fans and new complications due to COVID-19.
Devin McCourty joined WEEI’s ‘The Greg Hill Show’ on Friday and elaborated more on the team’s culture.
“I feel like everyone wants to create a new way of life now that Tom is gone, but a lot of the stuff we do here is still the same. The culture hasn’t changed,” he said. “I just think any time you have new people in the locker room, you have new personalities. Things change, things just don’t stay the same. I was a lot different when we had Aqib Talib here, Martellus Bennett, LeGarrette Blount, those guys all carry pretty big personalities.
“When that is gone and new players come in, the team just moves towards the personalities in the locker room. I would say this year we’ve had quite a bit of change throughout the team with personalities. It’s just different. For me, we’re a lot younger than before and that creates just a little bit of a different personality and culture, I guess.”
The Tennessee Titans were the first team that had to be postponed because of the virus, and McCourty also shared his thoughts on the situation.
“No, I think that is what it is – we’re playing in a pandemic,” he said. “Obviously, it’s been shocking because we haven’t had to deal with that the first few weeks of the season. We’ve done really well. I think it was a reminder that we’re still in a pandemic and those things still happen. I saw this morning the President and the First Lady tweeted out that they have coronavirus — they tested positive. I think it’s just a reminder that this virus affects everybody and anybody. I still feel like we have a really safe environment with what we’ve done to protect each other and we just have to keep doing it, doing a good job of it and understand if it does happen we can’t really avoid it.”
The Patriots plays the Kansas City Chiefs on Sunday, registering their toughest regular season matchup of the year.
