Patriots safety Devin McCourty suggested in the days preceding the Super Bowl that he’d possibly retire. He now says that he’ll be back for 2019.
“I’m gonna play,” McCourty told the Sports Spectrum podcast on Thursday.
McCourty had said during Opening Night in Atlanta that, if the Patriots win another championship, he’d possibly pack it in.
“I think once you get a chance to step away for a couple weeks now, you’re like, ‘Yeah, man, I still do want to be around these other young guys that come in,’” McCourty said, pointing to coach Bill Belichick’s constant effort to get the players to think about last year and focus on the next one.
“It kind of made you realize that if you only play this game for Super Bowls, you’re going to be very empty,” he said. “Because like as soon as you win it, it’s all about how you can win it next year. . . . All anybody cares about is if we win a seventh championship for the New England organization. So like you have to play for so much more.”
So McCourty will indeed be back -- and the Patriots are indeed already determined to get their seventh Super Bowl win, which would be the most that any team has ever won.