FOXBOROUGH — “There ain’t no flushing, because we ain’t looking forward to next week,” veteran safety Jaylinn Hawkins said Tuesday morning while he and his Patriots teammates cleaned out their lockers. “That was the last game, so it’s like, ahh … you know what I’m saying? You feel it.”
There was no mistaking that sense of disappointment around the locker room, as Patriots players were able to reflect on their Super Bowl loss to Seattle with the benefit of 36 hours to process the game’s events. Yet while there was undoubtedly an air of sadness at the missed opportunity, the general feeling from players up and down the roster was one of positivity on the season and for the future.
There was, however, one locker stall where the emotions were still a bit raw, as rookie left tackle Will Campbell addressed the media for the first time since Sunday’s game. Campbell declined the opportunity to speak after the 29-13 loss, during which he struggled mightily to protect Drake Maye, contributing to the quarterback taking six sacks on the night. On Tuesday, Campbell explained his reasoning for avoiding the postgame cameras and microphones.
“I’m not gonna give any sound bites today, but the guy in the locker room [after the game] is a young man who has a lot of emotions, who probably doesn’t care what he says,” Campbell explained. “I’m trying to think of the best way to say this … . When I get emotional, I tend to have no mind, and that’s not the way that I need to approach this thing. And like I said, I know myself, and if I would have spoken after, I would have said something that I didn’t need to say. So I slept on it. I watched it. I know what I gotta get better at and move on.”
While Campbell dealt with his own emotions in the locker room Sunday night in Santa Clara, Maye sat at a podium for 16 minutes, fighting through his tears to speak with reporters.
“I love that dude,” Campbell said. “And I want to be better for him. I know that he was emotional. I think everyone on the team was emotional. When you lose the biggest game of your life, there’s obviously not going to be smiling, high-fiving.”
Campbell is on the record as not caring about social media commentary on his performance, but he did state that he understands the criticism that comes after the way he played on the biggest stage.
“I mean, it comes with the job when you don’t perform,” Campbell said. “Obviously I was picked high, paid a lot, so people expect a certain thing, and I expect more of myself. So whenever I don’t perform, I don’t expect everyone to be like, ‘It’s OK, buddy.’ I mean, obviously it sucks, but it doesn’t suck for anyone more than it sucks for me.”
While Campbell may be unaware of the online conversations surrounding his place in the NFL as a tackle, he did take a moment to defend his body of work from his rookie season.
“I don’t think one performance defines a season,” he said. “I think I did some good things this year. Obviously, there’s room for growth in every aspect of my game. I’m 22 years old. I have a lot of room for growth in every aspect as a player, as a leader, whether that’s strength and conditioning, pass protection, run blocking, whatever it might be. I have growth everywhere. I’m young. I’m learning. I got a great coaching staff around me. I got great veterans around me, so I’m grateful for that, and I’ll be ready to go when we get back.”
Campbell added: “Our defense played good enough for us to win the game, and we didn’t help them. So, you know, it sucks to go into the offseason and have this much off time with that taste in your mouth, but I think it’ll fuel some guys, me included, to learn from it, get better and get ready to go again.”
• Drake Maye was the lone Patriots player to speak at the podium Tuesday morning, likely to avoid a Beatlemania type of scene at his locker. Maye said he won’t need surgery on his injured right shoulder, and that despite the pregame injection to manage the pain, he didn’t feel restricted when it came to throwing the football against Seattle.
“You can’t blame things on injuries. Things happen like this all the time in the league. I was blessed this year,” Maye said. “Was just unfortunate it happened to be the throwing [shoulder], but at the same time, I could have prevented it or made more plays. I was feeling like I was able to make throws in the game and I was myself.”
Maye did note that the injury came from “one hit in the AFC Championship Game that was just kind of unfortunate,” presumably the one delivered by Talanoa Hufanga on a late slide by Maye.
• Christian Gonzalez put forth a postseason performance that confirmed he is among the best cornerbacks in football. His eligibility for a top-dollar contract extension now figures to be one of the largest stories of the Patriots’ offseason.
Gonzalez, though, played the “let my agent handle that” card when asked about it on Tuesday.
“That’s kind of more my agents,” he said. “They’ll deal with that and keep me up to speed on it.”
Gonzalez played lights out in the Super Bowl, breaking up the only two passes that were thrown in his direction, both in spectacular fashion. That capped a truly dominant postseason for the third-year cornerback, who earned his first Pro Bowl spot a year after being named Second Team All-Pro.
“Oh yeah, no doubt,” Gonzalez replied when asked if he wants to remain in New England for the long term. “This is where I got drafted, and I don’t want to be anywhere else.”
• Will Campbell also shed some light on the knee injury that forced him to miss four games late in the regular season.
“I mean, obviously I wasn’t 100 percent. When you tear a ligament in the knee, it’s not gonna be how it was before. I was healthy enough to go,” he said. “I’m not gonna say that it held me back. But yeah, it wasn’t the same as it was before, obviously. But I was good.”
• Edge rusher K’Lavon Chaisson signed a one-year, $3 million deal with the Patriots in free agency and delivered the best season of his career. In 20 games played in the regular season and postseason, Chaisson recorded 10.5 sacks — more than he had made in the first five seasons of his career combined.
That performance is likely to earn him a much more lucrative contract in free agency this time around, but he did express some confidence that he could stick around.
“Man, this organization, the city, everything’s been amazing. I feel like anybody who got a chance to experience this wouldn’t want to leave. And I’m appreciative to be a part of it,” Chaisson said.
When asked if he believes a new deal in New England could happen, Chaisson said, “I feel like it can.”
“I feel like I got true faith within the organization, within the guys upstairs, just everything that we had going on this year,” he said. “I trust in the process for sure.”
• Chaisson was also asked what Mike Vrabel meant to him and his career resurgence this season.
