When I first started this blog back in 2010, Patrick Chung was one of my favorite players. He came to New England right at the start of the defensive rebuild and for a fan base longing for another Rodney Harrison-esque enforced in the secondary, Patchung! (as I called him then) fit the mold.
Today Bill Belichick touched a bit on what has made Chung’s second stint with the Patriots so much better for the team and the player and I thought his answers were telling.
“He’s great at that; finding the ball, getting through traffic, fitting in the running game, covering in traffic. He knows all of those kinds of things. He’s really good at that,” Belichick said of Chung’s abilities near the line of scrimmage. “When we had him before he left and then he came back and you know we just weren’t able to put him into some of the positions that he should’ve been put in. We had other things to deal with. We were trying to deal with other things on the defense and we’ve been able to I would say play him in a much better way in the last three years than we did when he was here the first time. I think our utilization of him has been better. He’s been pretty much the same player but I think we’ve been able to utilize him better the last three years and he’s done a great job embracing the different responsibilities that we’ve given him, which he has a lot of different things to do on the defense within the game or from game to game.”
One of the biggest problems with Chung was that he couldn’t stay healthy. He missed 14 games from 2010-2012, when he was hitting his prime and the Patriots desperately needed help in their secondary.
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What a busy Tuesday in Pats Nation (or Bill’s Mafia as Doug Kyed penned) yesterday was. The Patriots dealt away TE AJ Derby, my training camp binky, to the Broncos for a 5th round pick in 2017, and traded for Lions LB