In honor of @PatrickChung23 getting an extension, here’s highlights of perhaps his best game as a Patriot, 2010 vs Miami: 1 punt block, 1 FG block (returned for a TD) and a pick 6! #Patriots pic.twitter.com/FOwvLmiG2h
— ’03 Kliff Kingsbury (@fearthe_beard11) March 17, 2018
When I started this blog, Patrick Chung was one of the early favorites. Seriously there are 42 pages of posts about Chung, or as I dubbed him early on, Patchung! because he played with reckless abandon and just patchunged the hell out of guys. That fearless playing style was what endeared him to us all, and made him an early favorite to replace Rodney Harrison who retired the year before Chung entered the league.
It didn’t quite work that way out of the gate, but ever since taking a brief hiatus in Philadelphia for a year, Chung has more than lived up to the lofty expectation of replacing maybe the toughest safety to ever don a Patriots uniform. Chung has now signed another contract extension, his third since rejoining the team, locking him up through 2020 and solidifying an area that I thought could possibly transition sooner than many thought.
With guys like Kenny Vaccaro and later Tyrann Mathieu available and Chung set to turn 31 in August with a $3.8 million cap hit, I wondered if it might be one of those year-too-early situations, but happily, I was wrong and Chung isn’t going anywhere.
It’s hard to say how much Chung means to the defense now. In his first stint, the Pats were still playing a lot of zone defense, putting Chung at free safety where he didn’t have the range that Devin McCourty and Duron Harmon would later bring. No one play showed this more clearly than when he was just a moment too late to break up the pinpoint Mario Manningham pass on the final drive of Super Bowl 46. He also had his struggles when they played him in the slot and battled a fair amount of injuries, missing 14 games in his final three seasons in New England before they let him walk.
When he returned I can remember thinking he might be nothing more than a special teamer, but alas the scheme had changed and Chung was inserted into a more traditional strong safety box role. He played more under control, but with the same fire and avoided injuries. Before we knew it he was playing nearly every snap and slowly he began to cover not just tight ends but those slot receivers that used to give him problems.
Since his return in 2014 he’s been in the top three in team tackles and missed just a single game, providing leadership and consistency that has been a hallmark of the defense that has been to three of the last four Super Bowls and won two of them. Chung led the team in tackles in both Super Bowl 51 and 52. He’s arguably the heart and soul of the second dynasty defense and I can’t imagine the Patriots defense without him.
Locking in Chung for another three seasons practically guarantees he’ll end his career with the Pats, or at least that the Pats will squeeze every last bit out of him that they can. It’s one of the most remarkable stories of the second half of Bill Belichick’s tenure, the rare player who leaves, comes backs and finally reaches the potential we all hoped for when he was taken in the second round of 2009.
Congrats to Chung and I look forward to watching all the more Patchungs to come.