Patrick Chung still shakes his head sometimes at how much of a difference a year makes.
At this time last year, the Rancho Cucamonga High product was coming off a disastrous season and weeks away from being cut.
Flash forward and Chung is preparing to start his second Super Bowl at safety for the New England Patriots.
“Things change every day,” Chung said in a phone interview shortly before the Patriots left for Arizona. “Sometimes they change for the better and sometimes for the worse. This time it was for the better. I’m just blessed with a better situation.”
Chung, 27, has been one of the redemption stories of the year for the AFC champions and across the NFL. A standout in high school at Rancho Cucamonga, in college at Oregon and in his first few years in the NFL with the Patriots, Chung experienced his lowest football point last season.
After a largely successful start to his NFL career with the Patriots, including a start in their Super Bowl XLVI loss to the New York Giants, Chung signed a three-year, $10 million free-agent deal with the Philadelphia Eagles before the 2013 season. What followed was messy, with Chung the object of scorn from Philadelphia fans and media alike. After several benchings, tense moments and multiple fan blog threads devoted to trashing him, the Eagles released him after one season.
NJ Advance Media’s Mark Eckel summed it up succinctly: “Patrick Chung, in his one year with the Eagles, was a disaster at safety. He couldn’t stay on the field, and when he did he wasn’t very good.”
Normally open to talk about anything, Chung quickly closes up when asked about his experience in Philadelphia.
“I’m not going go into all that,” he said, curtly. “Basically I’m glad things worked out here.”
It was bad enough that when Chung came back to the Patriots, the organization that drafted him and knew him as well as anyone, all he could get was a one-year, $740,000 base salary deal with the expectation that maybe he could contribute as a backup or on special teams.
Instead, Chung flourished upon his return to New England. He retooled every part of his game, seized a starting job out of training camp and played more than three-quarters of the team’s defensive snaps. He finished third on the team with 89 tackles and had seven pass deflections.
“When I came back I really kind of worked on everything,” Chung said. “If you’re good at something you can get great at it. If you’re bad at something you can get good at it. The effort has to be all around; you can’t just work on one thing. I was just being a student of the game, trying to anticipate and be a coach on the field a little bit. If you can anticipate you can play fast, so that’s what I tried to do.”
He was rewarded for his efforts last month when the Patriots gave him a three-year, $8.2 million contract extension.
“We both felt that we would want to try to give it another shot and we were able to come to an agreement on that contractually, and I think he has done a real good job for us,” Patriots coach Bill Belichick told local media in November. “He’s filled a lot of different roles. He’s played well, helped us in the kicking game, helped us defensively in a number of areas. He’s been around the ball, productive.”
“He has experience, so even though he is a new player, he was here for four years so in a way he has a lot of experience in our system,” Belichick said. “It’s worked out really well. From my end of it, I feel great about having him on the team and what he has done for us.”
The bump in the road in Philadelphia wasn’t pleasant, but Chung worked to get back to where he wanted to be: with New England, secure in a contract, playing in the Super Bowl.
“It was just great to get back here,” Chung said. “I knew a lot of guys here and the coaches here and it was a good atmosphere and it was what worked. We treat each other as brothers and as family.
“A lot of players never get the opportunity to play in two Super Bowls, or even the playoffs, so it’s definitely a blessing to be in that category. Now we’re gonna try and go win it this time.”
Contact the writer: kglaser@pressenterprise.com
