The Patriots are facing the same lack of time to prepare as every NFL team, and have the additional pressure of building an offense from scratch with a quarterback to be determined.
But the group that returns largely intact doesn’t take their communication for granted.
Via Andrew Callahan of the Boston Herald, the Patriots secondary is concentrating on the basics of their job, and not assuming that because everyone’s back that everyone’s on the same page.
“It’s to have everyone on the same mental plane as far as communication, [and] refreshing that,” cornerback Jonathan Jones said. “I mean, even for the veteran guys, just hearing some of those terminologies over and over again, and starting from scratch. I think that’s something we kind of do every year. We don’t assume that everyone knows anything, so we start on the playbook from page one.”
They brought in safety Adrian Phillips and used their top draft pick on safety Kyle Dugger, but the core of the secondary remains from last year’s top pass defense.
“In the [secondary], just having those guys who have seen the same thing over and over, there’s subtle communication between each other that we’ve grown into an understanding. So, getting back to that once we get on the field, I think we’ll be a step ahead,” Jones said. “But, like I said, we have to continue with that with these meetings to just kind of refresh that.”
They’ll need to be on point, because there’s no way to guess what the Patriots will look like on the other side of the ball, going into a season that was uncertain anyway.