The team also put together a video tribute from former teammates like Tom Brady, Julian Edelman, Vince Wilfork, Stephon Gilmore, Duron Harmon, Matthew Slater, David Andrews, and many more.
Several things make McCourty a Hall of Fame person off the field, but head coach Bill Belichick broke down the on-field elements that made the 12-time team captain the perfect quarterback of his defense.
Belichick told a story about a pre-draft meeting with McCourty on the Rutgers campus. He was attending linebackers coach Steve Belichick’s lacrosse game and decided to watch film with McCourty ahead of the 2010 draft.
“When we got into the film, I got blown away. Coach [Greg] Schiano told me that Devin was really smart, could run the defense, and knew what everybody was doing. I’ve heard that before, so I was like, we’ll see,” Belichick began.
“I started asking him a few questions about the secondary. What’s this coverage, who does this, who does that? If this guy goes in motion, what’s the call? He went through all that pretty good. So I thought I’d wrap it up a little here and started asking him about the linebackers. What are they keying on this? What are they doing on that? He knocks that out too.”
“So then I figured I’m going to embarrass him a little bit here. Let’s start talking about the defensive line. One of the classic things everyone calls is a stunt where the tackle and the end go inside, and the corner comes. It’s called a pirate stunt. It’s pretty universal,” Belichick continued. “I said, what’s this called, Devin? Let me guess, it’s called a ‘pirate,’ and he goes, no, it’s actually ‘buck’ because everybody knows what a pirate is, so we call it a buck. He knocks out the whole defensive line, too.”
“I had never had an interview like this. I was completely stunned that he knew as much as he did about the entire Rutgers defense,” Belichick said.
The Patriots head coach then cited the 2018 AFC Championship Game as an instance where that high football IQ translated on the…
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