Announcing his retirement this offseason after opting out of last season, longtime Patriots safety Patrick Chung didn’t get to spend much time around New England’s 2020 draft class.
But that doesn’t mean the respected defender hasn’t had an impact on the group. In fact New England’s top two selections in last year’s draft – safety Kyle Dugger and linebacker Josh Uche – revealed to the media this week during a video call that Chung has left a lasting imprint on them in the infancy of their careers in Foxborough.
“There’s just so much more to learn,” Uche told reporters as he works through the first full offseason of his career. “I was talking to Patrick Chung the other day and he said something that stuck with me, which was, ‘Learn till you die.’ The moment that you think you know everything is the moment that you’ve lost. So I’m just trying to learn every day and just get better every day.”
Chung, a captain and one of the most versatile, productive Patriots defenders over the last decade, imparted that wisdom when he crossed paths with Uche at Gillette Stadium when the safety was finalizing his retirement plans.
“So I got the honor to actually talk to him briefly and ask him some words of advice and words of wisdom,” Uche added. “That was one of the main things he said was you have to continue to learn. You don’t know it all. You should never go in thinking you already have all the answers. So that’s where it came out, that’s where he said, ‘Learn till you die.’ It’s stuck with me ever since.”
Dugger, who’s expected to be the centerpiece future of the safety position in New England, said he’s taken similar verbal lessons from Chung in their limited interactions.
“Grasp things. Take hold of them. Trust yourself. Trust what you learn, what you’ve been taught my first year. And really trust yourself to be able to … be able to use everything and be able to play faster and allow yourself to be in your own rhythm,” Dugger relayed of conversations with Chung.
As the impressive young safety has worked to take his game to the next level this spring, that work has included watching film of what Chung brought to the back end over the years, a role Dugger said he’d “definitely” like to evolve into as he builds on a productive rookie season that included starting seven of the 14 games played while recording 64 tackles.
“I haven’t been able to watch as many game clips as I’ve like, but I’ve definitely watched a lot of practice clips which is just as useful,” Dugger said. “I have been able to watch every other day at least, just from coaches showing me exactly what, the correct way to do things. I definitely would like to model my game after him, the roles he’s played, the versatility he has, physicality, everything he brought to the defense.”
Dugger has dug even deeper into the film archives for inspiration in his own safety evolution.
“I’ve watched a little bit of Rodney Harrison and also a little bit of Troy Polamalu,” Dugger said, the latter the former Steelers four-time All-Pro safety. “I still have a lot of film to get through. But there are definitely some similarities in just the position they were playing in their career and the type of game style they played, how they played the game. So I watched a lot of them two. And I plan on watching a lot more.
“Just the trust of their football instincts. Some stuff that they do, you either have it just by trusting yourself or you don’t. Some of the plays they made, just trusting themselves and what they saw and what their eyes told them and going and making the play.”