“Excited” was the word of the day for Patriots center and team captain David Andrews when he connected with the New England media Tuesday morning via video call after wrapping up a workout at Gillette Stadium.
Andrews re-signed with the Patriots this March after testing the free agent waters but failing to find greener grass.
“Super excited to be back. Super excited to see all the new faces we have and added. This is home, like I’ve said. This is a special place to me,” Andrews declared.
As the former undrafted center noted, his return is one of the many, many moves Bill Belichick and the Patriots made in an historically aggressive and expensive offseason.
In his role as center and captain, Andrews will help lead the new-look Patriots offensive line, rebuilt offense and retooled team as a whole.
It’s a proposition that has the seventh-year Georgia product fired up.
“I think you have to be excited looking at it, right?,” Andrews said of the offseason and injection of talent to the roster. “We can’t do anything really, there are certain limitations on what we can do practice wise and things like that obviously. But we’re trying to do everything we can to make this football team better.
“Now it comes down to the stuff that people don’t want to talk about, is how much work we put in over the next three to four months. We’ve made a lot of improvement on paper and that’s definitely a part of it. Now we have to become a football team. We have to work together, learn to work together, because obviously there’s going to be a lot of new faces. We just have to become a team and start putting it all together here, build through the offseason and obviously into training camp. Excited to get the whole ball rolling here.”
In the early stages of that process, the early days of the voluntary offseason in-person workouts that have divided some teams and the NFLPA, Andrews is also enjoying the first few steps toward “normalcy” in his job that so many in the world are striving for these days with the hope that the COVID pandemic is loosening its grip on the world around us.
“Obviously there are still some restrictions and guidelines and whatever you want to call them. But it’s great to be back in the building,” Andrews said. “It’s great to have the opportunity to go to work. I enjoy going to work. I enjoy being around people and seeing people and being in the building. So I’m enjoying whatever normalcy we can get.”
And in case you didn’t hear or couldn’t tell, Andrews is very much hopeful for what 2021 might have in store for he and his Patriots teammates.
“Excited to be back in a place that I want to be in and get the chance to go back to work,” Andrews concluded, sounding every bit the lineman and the leader that he is in New England.
