Devin McCourty was a key piece in the second act of the Patriots dynasty, where far more games were won than lost.
He still went just 5-8 at Miami.
For whatever reason, playing at Hard Rock Stadium in South Florida always seemed to flummox New England. Speaking to Mike Giardi on the All 32 podcast, McCourty offered an interesting explanation. The safety believed Bill Belichick tried so hard to prepare for the temperature that players were gassed by the time game day arrived.
“I love Bill,” McCourty said. “Bill used to always say, ‘I don’t want to hear about the weather.’ The weather plays a part in this. And again, we won a lot of games, and Bill’s madness resulted in a lot of victories. But I always hated our Miami weeks at the end of the year.
“We would be going in the bubble, cranking the heat up, and I just felt like that would wear us down. And now you’re going into the game worn down. We open either ’21 or ’22 in Miami. I forgot which year, and we went down there early so we could get acclimated. But like, instead of getting acclimated again, I felt like by the time Sunday came, it was like, ‘Holy.’ You know what I mean? Like, I think that played a part in it.”
The Patriots take on the Dolphins in South Florida on Sunday afternoon at 1 p.m.
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