While Tom Brady is planning to play in his tenth Super Bowl, his old group as of now is a month into its offseason.
The New England Patriots completed 7-9 in their first season without the whiz quarterback, posting their most noticeably awful record since 2000 and missing the end of the season games unexpectedly since 2008.
Nationalists guarded tackle and co-skipper Lawrence Guy reworded lead trainer Bill Belichick’s message to the group after its strangely frustrating effort.
“Mentor will do what he must do,” Guy said when gotten some information about the Patriots’ arrangement pushing ahead. “When we left our exit meeting, it was one of those things like, ‘Hey, what’s going to happen next?’ And was like, ‘You guys have to understand. This was a season that we didn’t predict. We had COVID hit. We had a lot of situations that occurred on our team. There was a lot of new people. We didn’t win games that we want to win. But that doesn’t mean that we just put our tails under our butts and just walk away. That means you strive to be better the following year.’
“I’ve never been with the organization where, win or loss, we come out the following year like, ‘OK, we need to be better.’ ‘We won a Super Bowl? We watch the corrections from the Super Bowl. We won it, but look at all these bad plays we have to improve so we don’t have to do this again the following year.’ And that’s what type of person Coach is. We’re going to improve regardless of the situation. It might not be the outcome that some people might not want, wins or losses, but it’s going to get better every single week.”
As Guy noticed, the pandemic definitely affected the Patriots’ season.
To begin with, they lost a NFL-high eight players including starters Dont’a Hightower, Patrick Chung and Marcus Cannon to preseason pick outs. At that point, quarterback Cam Newton tried positive for COVID-19 toward the beginning of October, setting off an episode that brought about two game deferments and almost two entire long stretches of dropped rehearses.
The Patriots endured a four-game losing streak after Newton’s conclusion and never moved back over 500.
Fellow made light of the effect of New England’s select outs.
“There were a few players that opted out, and there were a few players that stepped up where you got to see their potential and see them strive who they were going to be and who they’re becoming to be,” he said. “But at the end of the day, those players that opted out weren’t on that field playing in the game, so they didn’t win or lose a game for us.
“The players that were on the field are the people that won or lost the game. The games we lost, we lost as a team. The games we won, we won as a team. It wasn’t one unit or one play. This year, we had a challenge that we had to face, and some of those challenges were nail-biters. It came to the last play, the last quarter, the last series, and we weren’t able to finish it. That’s how I look at it.”
The Patriots lost four one-score games yet dropped five others by twofold digits, including victory misfortunes to the San Francisco 49ers in Week 7, Los Angeles Rams in Week 14 and Buffalo Bills in Week 16.
It’s hazy whether Guy, who’s been with the Patriots since 2017, will be back next season. He’s set to turn into a free specialist in March yet wants to re-sign.
