When I first started this blog back in 2010, Patrick Chung was one of my favorite players. He came to New England right at the start of the defensive rebuild and for a fan base longing for another Rodney Harrison-esque enforced in the secondary, Patchung! (as I called him then) fit the mold.
Today Bill Belichick touched a bit on what has made Chung’s second stint with the Patriots so much better for the team and the player and I thought his answers were telling.
“He’s great at that; finding the ball, getting through traffic, fitting in the running game, covering in traffic. He knows all of those kinds of things. He’s really good at that,” Belichick said of Chung’s abilities near the line of scrimmage. “When we had him before he left and then he came back and you know we just weren’t able to put him into some of the positions that he should’ve been put in. We had other things to deal with. We were trying to deal with other things on the defense and we’ve been able to I would say play him in a much better way in the last three years than we did when he was here the first time. I think our utilization of him has been better. He’s been pretty much the same player but I think we’ve been able to utilize him better the last three years and he’s done a great job embracing the different responsibilities that we’ve given him, which he has a lot of different things to do on the defense within the game or from game to game.”
One of the biggest problems with Chung was that he couldn’t stay healthy. He missed 14 games from 2010-2012, when he was hitting his prime and the Patriots desperately needed help in their secondary.
We all remember how bad the 2010 and 2011 defenses were and those were the “other things” Belichick was referring to. Namely that the Patriots were still primarily a zone team in those days and were basically in a talent void as Belichick had to rebuild the defense from scratch.
Chung was used then as a deep safety, where he couldn’t really use his physicality, and as a slot cornerback against wide receivers, where frankly he just wasn’t good enough. But really no one was good enough in those days. The Pats defense instead lived off turnovers that came in bunches as the entire defense sat back in zone and either got picked apart or picked the quarterback off. Usually both.
So in 2013, the move to a more man coverage-centric defense was made and that opened the door to Chung’s resurgence. Instead of being a Cover 2 deep safety, Chung could play strong safety in the box in Cover 1 and Cover 3, similar to how Harrison did. With Devin McCourty settling into the free safety position it gave Chung a lot more freedom to do what he does best — sort through traffic and hammer people in the box.
Any time the Pats play a team that relies on running the ball, you can bet Chung is going to play a huge role.
His coverage has been his biggest point of improvement, though now he’s dealing more frequently with tight ends and sometimes running backs rather than quicker receivers. Chung’s physicality is the perfect match for that role now. It also helps that Chung seems more under control than he was when he was younger. He’s staying healthy, he’s missed just one game the last three seasons.
Chung is one of the most interesting stories of Belichick’s tenure in New England. Fans always want former favorite players to return to the team. Chung was one of the rare cases where it happened after just one season away and ultimately turned out better for everyone in the second stint.