Being back together as a team has helped the Patriots heal from last season's bitter ending.
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Jerod Mayo is among the players who reported for the Patriots' voluntary workouts.FOXBOROUGH – Matthew Slater couldn’t sleep.
The images of missed opportunities and failures haunting the special teams captain were too strong. It was weeks before he could finally lay his head on his pillow following the New England Patriots’ Super Bowl loss to the New York Giants.
And when Slater finally reached that point, his mind began playing cruel tricks on him.
“(I’m) really sour,” Slater said. “I still have dreams that I wake up and we won the game.”
Almost all members of the Patriots share similar stories of dread from the weeks following Super Bowl XLVI. Some members of the team still haven’t been able to bring themselves to watch tape of the game.
But the healing process finally began this week for those that reported to Gillette Stadium for the voluntary workouts that began on Monday.
“A disappointing season like that, the Super Bowl, you always just want to get back to work,” linebacker Jerod Mayo said. “Just getting the guys back together (helps ease the pain).”
Wide receiver Wes Welker, who is angling to earn a long-term deal after being assessed the franchise tag last month, was not among those in attendance on Tuesday, but newly acquired wide receiver Brandon Lloyd and offensive lineman Robert Gallery were.
Chad Ochocinco was also on hand and has apparently recommitted himself to the game after a disappointing 2011 campaign where he caught 15 passes for 276 yards.
“I’m Chad Johnson and I love football,” he wrote on Twitter. “I owe you a years worth of ‘Did he really just do that moments.’”
While there is much made of the attendance this time of year within the media, Mayo said that most players don’t concern themselves with who shows up for the workouts.
Since players work out in different groups at various times of the day, they generally don’t even know who is in the building unless they are in the same group. The biggest benefit of reporting for the sessions, Mayo said, is for team building.
“It’s always good to just get around the new faces and the young guys to kind of learn how to warm up with the team so when training camp comes around everyone knows what to do,” Mayo said.
And there’s also the benefit, at least this year, of getting over previous disappointments.
Those images still linger and cause pain, but this group of players say that it’s a new year and it’s time to step beyond what happened last year and turn over a new leaf.
They have no other option.
“This is a different team. We’ll have a lot of different faces,” Mayo said. “The only thing you can try to do each and every day and learn form these coaches and continue to work.”
It’s still early in the process, and even though they aren’t allowed to have contact with coach Bill Belichick, it sounds like the Patriots are already mentally beginning to round into midseason form.
