Patriots wide receiver Kendrick Bourne set career highs with 55 catches and 800 receiving yards during the 2021 season, but he wasn’t able to build on that in 2022.
Bourne joined the rest of the Patriots in an underwhelming offensive performance last season. He caught 35 passes for 434 yards, which was a drop in production that he didn’t blame on the team’s odd approach to the offensive coaching staff or anything other than the work he put into the season.
“I didn’t give the team my best effort,” Bourne said, via the team’s website. “Personally we as players have to be our best so we can give the team the opportunity to win and I feel like I didn’t do that. So I’ve been grinding, trying to get bigger, weighing more, just being a more solid receiver and being able to do more. I don’t really go off stats, I go off how I feel, how I look and I just wasn’t in a good place, now I just want to avoid that. So it was a good learning process, it was good that it happened to me, and it’s always good to learn from hard times, struggling times.”
Bourne said there is a “new year, new me, new us, new everything” with Bill O’Brien now running the offense and the team may be adding a new receiver in DeAndre Hopkins as well. The hope is that it will all pay off in new and better results once the Patriots hit the field in the fall.