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.