FOXBOROUGH, Mass. — No team minimizes distractions quite like the New England Patriots. Or so it has been for so many years.
The Patriot Way is a no-nonsense culture that flows from Bob Kraft and Bill Belichick and is all about winning, focus and community pride.
"You talk about the Patriot Way," Tom Brady said Thursday, "and to me that means mental toughness and to me it means dealing with different situations and adversities ... and how you can put those things behind you and focus on your job."
No doubt, Brady's definition is something to grasp about now.
The Patriots will begin their first full-squad camp practices today against the backdrop of a murder case. A few weeks ago, Aaron Hernandez was a key cog for a prolific offense. Now the former tight end, dropped by the team within hours of his June 26 arrest, is jailed without bond as he faces first-degree murder charges in the execution-style death of an acquaintance, Odin Lloyd.
"Training camp is here, and to come in on a note like this is tough," veteran nose tackle Vince Wilfork said. "We're not going to disrespect anything that's going on with the families, but our job is to play football. We're going to do everything in our willpower to ignore the noise and stay focused on the task at hand."
BRADY: Hernandez is in the past
With the entire team assembling for the first time since the murder case surfaced, Brady talked of a need to re-establish the team's culture. That can't be taken for granted.
Although Brady is entering his 14th season and Wilfork enters Year 10, the locker room is so different than it was six years ago, when the Patriots defiantly rallied through the adversity of Spygate and nearly pulled off a perfect season before losing in the Super Bowl.
That's not an attempt to compare murder to a videotaping scandal. Yet a few years ago, Brady and Wilfork were surrounded by the likes of Tedy Bruschi, Richard Seymour, Willie McGinest, Mike Vrabel, Troy Brown, Rodney Harrison and Kevin Faulk.
Now, given the spin cycle of NFL roster turnover, there's an extra burden on the veterans to show the way.
"The fate of our season," Brady said, "is going to be determined by the guys in the locker room and hopefully nothing else."
Yet even if the locker room pillars provide their typical model leadership by example and, say, become more vocal in holding teammates accountable, influencing what teammates engage in outside of work is a different type of animal.
Good locker room chemistry only goes so far. Face it, teams across the league continually warn players about off-the-field pitfalls. It's a matter of personal responsibility.
Belichick has the ultimate responsibility, though, for the type of players he brings into his program. Obviously, he never imagined the day that a player he drafted would be charged with murder, but Hernandez is his worst-case scenario for what has seemed to be a pattern of increasingly taking chances on players with red flags — as every team in the NFL does to some extent.
But Belichick is right. They need to learn from this terrible event.
In the meantime, football can provide some normalcy. Along with on-the-field issues.
Brady's receiving corps has had another makeover, most notably influenced by the departure of Wes Welker, the franchise's all-time leading receiver and blitz-beating security blanket. With Rob Gronkowski rehabbing from back surgery and Hernandez gone, the two-tight end scheme the Patriots unleashed two seasons ago is no longer a decided advantage. The defense is young. And months from now, the team will be challenged to get over the January hump and win another title.
The Patriot Way is about winning too. And for all of the division titles, the franchise has gone eight seasons since winning the Super Bowl.
That what was on Brady's mind as he headed back to the locker room.
"I just want to win the Super Bowl again," he said.
If he can just show them the way.
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