One of the Patriots' Best Players Explains His Awful Season and the Total Lack of Leadership on the Team
CJ GUNTHER. Shutterstock Images.Well this explains a lot.
About 11 months ago today I compiled a list of the pending free agents I most wanted the Patriots to re-sign. And No. 2 on that list was Kyle Dugger:
Dugger led the unit in total snaps with over 1,100 and solo tackles, with 79. He was also one of three Patriots to have over 100 combined tackles. And in addition to run support, has shown to be versatile enough to cover tight ends and backs as well as rush the passer (15 total pressures). Moreover, he's the leader at the back end of a defense that was able to lose Devin McCourty to retirement without a huge drop off. Dugger would be tough if not impossible to replace in a scheme that relies heavily on the back end of its secondary.
And of course, I got my wish. Only to see his 2024 season result in an unmitigated, injury-riddled disaster. One in which he:
--Compiled a passer rating against of 141.3, 8th highest among all safeties
--Allowed six touchdowns, tied for second most among safeties
--Recorded no interceptions or passes broken up among the 36 he allowed
--Had the lowest coverage grade at his position according to Pro Football Focus
--Received PFF's third lowest overall grade
--Had his career-worst totals in terms of missed tackles (14.1%) and reception rate (78.3%).
Other than these, everything was swell.
And as you'd figure with the Patriots most reliable all purpose defender having the Game of Thrones: Season 8 of career years, their defense's DVOA dropped from ninth in 2023 to 27th in 2024. Granted, there were other issues. But as much as anything, Dugger's lack of production was the thing the mechanic could point to under the hood and tell you that's what making all the sucking noise.
But there's good news. In the form of a perfectly legitimate explanation. And simple solution that's already been addressed:
Source - On Jan. 9, the longtime Patriots safety underwent tightrope surgery to re-stabilize an injured right ankle that worsened as the season progressed. Initially diagnosed as a mild sprain in late September, Dugger was told two weeks later he’d developed a bone bruise. Two months after that, around Christmas, he was informed he needed surgery often used to treat severe high ankle sprains. …
“I felt like I let the team down. And it was challenging because mentally, I couldn’t check out and recover,” Dugger told the Herald. “Guys were still looking to me, and I still needed to watch film and help guys see things and make plays, things that I felt like a good captain, a good leader, would do. And I was struggling because I was dealing with my own frustrations about not being able to play and not understanding why.
“Being told, basically, a sprain was keeping me back. And I’m just like, this doesn’t make sense.”
Dugger originally hurt the ankle with eight seconds left in the first quarter of the Patriots’ blowout loss at San Francisco. He’d leapt in the air to block a 49ers field goal attempt and landed with most of his body weight on his right ankle, which rolled. That was Week 4.
Two weeks later, Dugger declared himself fit enough to play against Houston, a game when he tweaked the ankle again.
“I honestly believe I should have taken another week off,” he admitted. “Then after Jacksonville (in Week 7), after I played that game, it kind of took a different turn as far as the pain. That went up pretty significantly from what it had come down to. …
“Initially, it’d be easy to use (the injury) as an excuse, you know? But the reality is I’m deciding to be out there. That’s what comes with the business, and it’s the decision I decided to make.
“So it was challenging at times, for sure, but once I made up my mind that that’s what I was going to do, I had to stand on it.”
And there we have it. There's yer problem, ma'am. For all the frustration of watching Dugger struggle, of watching him get targeted (in the game at Miami in Week 12, Tua Tagovailoa went to the man he was covering seven times, with six completions and 76 yards, including touchdowns to De'Von Archane and, of course, Jonnu Smith) more as the season went on, it wasn't on him. It wasn't for lack of effort. He didn't suddenly lose three steps at the age of 28. He didn't forget how to play tackle football. And for sure, he didn't pull a Jimmy Butler and just decide to start attacking his job with all the enthusiasm of a government employee.
Opposite. He did what the truly good ones do. The ones you want to sign to long term extensions. He was playing through stuff that probably should've ended his season early on. But he kept taking the field for 759 snaps (third most of his career) because he was needed. And he deserves to be recognized for nutting up and playing instead of opting to make a business decision.
Which brings us to why he decided he was needed so much. From the same article:
Reflecting on the lost season, Dugger pinned the Patriots’ struggles on a mix of inexperience and lack of leadership.
“It’s tough to put it on one thing,” he said. “I know for myself there were times where I didn’t do the best job as far as being a leader and trying to pull certain guys in the group and bridge the gap (in leadership). But we as a group, we had a lot of growing to do, especially with the losses we had, like (linebacker Ja’Whaun) Bentley.
He continued: “We needed guys that needed to step up confidently into those types of roles, but the reality is we missed (Bentley’s) presence. So it was tough trying to fill certain spots, and we just needed to grow up collectively and figure out how to pick it up. And that’s a group thing. You can’t really rely on one guy to fix things like that. It was a group thing. We just needed to grow up.”
Not 24 hours ago I was here posting about another safety - a team captain, no less - missing half the season with a domestic violence charges and admitting he was carrying Tony Montana Dust around in his wallet.
And how that was indicative of a much larger problem, the total lack of leadership on this team. Which makes it a very good thing that Dugger saw it, experienced it, tried to address it, and understand it needs to be solved if the Patriots are ever going to stop being the softest game on everybody's schedule and start being the brutal pain in the ass they used to be, in good times and in bad.
Fortunately, the Krafts have taken a huge step toward filling that leadership vacuum by hiring big Culture Guy Mike Vrabel. Who will undoubtedly elevate the guys like Dugger who intend to be part of the solution. And jettison the ones who aren't bought into the program overboard like so much supercargo. It can't happen soon enough.
Granted, the team also needs to figure out how their medical/training staff mistook a serious, debilitating high ankle sprain that got more severe as the season went on as just a mild nothingburger. The Twittersphere is blaming the fact Jerod Mayo's brother was the Strength and Conditioning coach. But that's probably just lazy scapegoating, since Deron Mayo had been on the staff since 2018. Whoever is to blame, that stuff has got to get cleaned up. It's been a chronic problem around Foxboro since the days they were gutting Rob Gronkowski like a fish every few weeks to undo the things that went wrong in the earlier surgeries.
But if nothing else, Kyle Dugger is still the player we thought he was. And the leadership issues on this team are being addressed. A great start to 2025 continues.