The Patriots will be checking out a potential addition to their defense on Tuesday.
Ian Rapoport of NFL Media reports that defensive end Janarius Robinson will be working out for the team.
Robinson spent last season with the Chiefs, but he did not appear in any games after fracturing his foot in the offseason. Robinson was a Vikings fourth-round pick in 2021 and moved on to the Eagles in 2022, but spent most of both seasons on injured reserve.
Robinson did play in 16 games for the Raiders over the next two seasons. He had 13 tackles and 1.5 sacks in those appearances.
North Carolina coach Bill Belichick could use some good P.R. There’s no better way to get it than to appear on a wildly popular podcast and, in so doing, attempt to come off as almost human.
He largely accomplished that in his visit with Pardon My Take, even if — as Carmine Lupertazzi once said — a Don never wears shorts.
During the extended interview, the issue of Belichick’s “no days off” motto came up. After all these years, Belichick explained that it doesn’t reflect a maniacal mandate to working every single day but a commitment to working hard on work days.
“Most people don’t really understand what that means — or what it meant to us, I should say — what it meant to us,” Belichick said. “What it meant to us was, when you come to work, you go to work. You don’t come to work and dillydally around and like, ‘I was here, I broke a sweat, I showed up,’ and go home. That’s a day off.
“When we said, ‘no days off,’ we meant, ‘You come to work, you’re ready to work, you’re prepared, you put in a good day’s work,’ OK? Maybe tomorrow’s an off day. . . . That’s fine. I’m not saying like, ‘Don’t take a day off.’ We’re saying, ‘Don’t come to the stadium and take a day off.’ And so the ‘no days off’ was when you come in here, man, we expect your best and we expect you to work at it. When we’re done, we’re done, and, you know, you’re with your family or you’re, you know, whatever you’re doing. Sure, there’s days off. But don’t take them here.”
It wasn’t viewed that way. As Belichick said, it became part of the “hype train of the Patriots.”
“I’m sure it’s sold towels and some, you know, beer mugs or whatever,” Belichick said. “And it was used in a different context.”
It’s a reasonable explanation. And, if it had been provided at the time, Belichick would have been perceived as less of a curmudgeon who lacks perspective or life balance and more as a guy spreading the very positive message of being fully engaged in your work, on your work days.
That said, the rule only applied to the players. For the coaching staff and the front office, there weren’t many days off.
The 2026 regular season begins where the 2025 postseason ended — with a game between the Patriots and Seahawks.
During a Friday press conference regarding the newly-released schedule, NFL Media executive V.P. and COO Hans Schroeder explained the decision to start the year with a Super Bowl rematch despite the fact that the Super Bowl was lopsided.
“I think one of the things to go back to last year is, you’ll remember in Week 2, we actually replayed the Super Bowl — similar Super Bowl dynamic from a couple years ago, in that that Philly-K.C. game in New Orleans wasn’t necessarily a particularly close one,” Schroeder said. “But we saw that rematch, I think, did 33 million viewers in that second week doubleheader game.
“So coming out of that, and to the point of always learning and trying to see what we can learn from the data and the information we get, we thought it’d be really exciting to come back. A Super Bowl relevant rematch is never going to be more relevant than in Week 1, and sort of pick up this year where we ended off last year, had a really neat symmetry or connection to it. So we really love that idea. We looked at, you know, a number of opponents for Seattle in that window, but we think [the kickoff game is] a really big window. It’s one of those places where we think we can continue to build the audience higher and just love the idea of opening the season where we left it last year with another chance for the Patriots or the Seahawks and that game in particular.”
An immediate Super Bowl rematch has started the season only twice before, with the Panthers and Broncos meeting in the opening game of 2016 and the Vikings and Chiefs squaring off in Week 1 of the 1970 season, the first year of the merged AFL and NFL.
Since 2016, there have been four other Super Bowl rematches in the next regular season. In 2017, the Patriots hosted the Falcons in Week 7. In 2023, the Eagles visited the Chiefs in Week 11. In 2024, the 49ers and Chiefs met in Kansas City in Week 7. And, as Schroeder mentioned, the Chiefs hosted the Eagles in Week 2 last year.
This will be the fourth straight season featuring a rematch of the prior year’s Super Bowl.
Some have suggested that the NFL opted for Patriots-Seahawks as a way to lean into the story of the offseason. It’s hard to believe the league would specifically want to do that, since it’s not exactly the kind of thing the NFL would want to affirmatively showcase.
Then again, if the goal is to have the biggest possible audience for the opening game, starting the year with Patriots-Seahawks will attract plenty of the folks who may not be football fans, and who may have curiosity about New England coach Mike Vrabel, given his repeated mentions in TMZ and Page Six.
And, like a Super Bowl rematch, that storyline will never be more relevant than it will be in Week 1.
With voluntary offseason workouts in full swing, one key member of the Patriots’ offense hasn’t been volunteering to show up.
As noted by Mike Reiss of ESPN, Boutte has been working out on his own.
Yes, it’s not mandatory (except for the annual mandatory minicamp). But it makes sense to be there; if a player suffers a serious injury while working out on his own, the team has the prerogative to deem it a non-football injury and not pay him.
It’s unclear why Boutte isn’t there. The sixth-round pick in the 2023 draft is currently eligible for a new contract, and he’s entering the final year of his rookie deal at a base salary of $3.674 million. He’s possibly withholding services while he angles for a financial reward.
Boutte has had his moments, even if he’s never had more than 589 receiving yards in any of his three NFL seasons. He had three catches for 75 yards and a touchdown during the divisional-round win over the Texans in January.
The arrival of Romeo Doubs via free agency will complicate Boutte’s attempt to have the kind of fourth season that will set him up for a solid free-agency deal. The expected trade for A.J. Brown will only make things more difficult for Boutte.
Whatever the reason(s), Boutte isn’t there for voluntary workouts. Whether he’ll be there beyond the 2026 season remains to be seen; it’s entirely possible that, once Brown arrives (if a trade with the Eagles happens after June 1), the Patriots will make Boutte available to any other interested team.
Tom Brady has spent the past two seasons working as a broadcaster for Fox. He has yet to call a game in New England.
That will change this season.
Fox announced that Brady will be in the booth for the Patriots’ Week 9 game against the Packers, which is set for a 4:25 p.m. kickoff.
“He’s backkkkk,” Fox wrote in a social media post.
It seems a certainty that the Patriots will honor Rob Gronkowski at that game. The former tight end was recently elected into the Patriots Hall of Fame, and the team announced last month that the date of Gronkowski’s induction would be announced at a later date.
Brady spent 20 seasons with the Patriots, winning six of his seven Super Bowls there. Gronkowski played with Brady for nine seasons in New England and two in Tampa.
Brady retired in the 2023 offseason.
