In the weeks leading up to the 2024 regular season for the Patriots, the conversation locally around the team has almost entirely been about the offense.
“Who will be the starting quarterback?”
“Who made the final decision on who will start at QB?”
“When will Drake Maye play?”
TBD.
“Will the team trade for a star wide receiver or left tackle to help bolster an offense that ranked 31 out of 32 teams in 2023?”
At the moment - no.
So what about the defense?
On Thursday, Patriots defensive coordinator DeMarcus Covington met with the media ahead of Sunday’s season opener against the Cincinnati Bengals.
And while this season will mark his eighth as a member of the Patriots defensive staff, it’s his first ever as a coordinator.
The rookie DC could not be more excited for his first Sunday running the unit.
“I’ve always dreamed of doing this,” said Covington. “So, like, this is, ‘Hey, we here now.’ So it’s not like, ‘Oh s***, what’s gonna happen?’ Naw, I’ve been dreaming on it, I’ve been waiting on this.”
He’s inheriting the better of the team’s two units, as last season the Patriots ranked 15th in overall defense in the league - an impressive mark given the incredible amount of injuries sustained as well as the lack of support on the offensive side of the football.
With almost the entire defense from last year returning, including second-year standout cornerback Christian Gonzalez coming back healthy after missing almost his entire rookie season with a torn labrum, the expectation is that this unit will remain the strength in 2024.
And it appears head coach Jerod Mayo subscribes to this theory, as Covington told the media that the first-year head coach has empowered his coaching staff to handle the defensive game plan.
“Jerod and I have built up a good amount of time together, and we see the game the same,” said Covington. “He trusts the defensive staff, along with the guys who have been here in the past and the guys we’ve put on our staff, he trusts the defensive staff and what we’re doing.
“He’ll come in with a suggestion or so, but he trusts us as a defensive staff to make sure we’re good on a game plan.”
Two players missing from this year’s game plan are Christian Barmore and Matthew Judon.
Barmore, widely regarded as one of the best defensive linemen in the NFL, is away from the team indefinitely as he continues to receive treatments for blood clots.
While this is an inarguably massive loss for the team, Covington believes the strength of the defense as a whole will make up for Barmore’s absence.
“When you think about our defense, period, we’re good as a unit,” said Covington. “So that’s what we do - we’re good as a unit. We’re not an individual based defense, or individual, like, ‘We’re gonna win because of this one person.’
“We’re gonna win because we play well as a team, and we play good team defense, and we play with fundamentals, and we play aggressive, and we do what we supposed to do. That’s why we win - that’s why we’re gonna win, and that’s how, you know, we’ve done it really in the past, too. Not just like, ‘Alright, this one person is going to make us win or lose.’”
Judon, on the other hand, is away from the team altogether, as he was traded to the Atlanta Falcons during training camp for a 2025 third-round draft pick after weeks of publicly griping about wanting a contract extension from the Patriots’ front office.
The 31-year-old is heading into the final season of a four-year, $54.5 million deal, and is scheduled to be paid $6.5 million in 2024.
At the moment, the four-time Pro Bowl defensive end has not yet received an extension from his new team, but that’s no longer Covington’s concern.
“One of the things with Judon not being here, there’s opportunities for players to show what they can do,” said Covington. “Even when he was on our team, in the spring he wasn’t here during the OTA phase, which gave those guys the opportunity, the reps. And we use training camp, spring, OTAs for that opportunity to see what we can do. And that’s how you develop whether your a core starter, or you develop your back-ups, your rotational players.
“We got plenty of players that’s on our team that can fill in those roles, that next man mentality. And we have players that’s ready for that. So I think we believe in them as a coaching staff, they believe in themselves, and then they’ve earned the right and earned the trust of their teammates.”
So no Barmore, no Judon, no problem for Covington, as the Patriots defense attempts to slow down one of the league’s most exciting offenses in Week 1, a unit led by quarterback Joe Burrow and wide receiver Ja’Marr Chase.
New England has a 12-14 record in road opening days all-time, and has not won a season opener since 2020. BetMGM currently lists the Patriots as an 8.5-point underdog, the largest underdog in the NFL for Week 1.
We’ll see if Covington and his defense have anything to say about a possible upset on Sunday.