New England Patriots safety Devin McCourty is in the San Francisco Bay Area ahead of Sunday's Super Bowl 50 there, taking part in media interviews with his twin brother, Jason, as part of promoting his work with sickle cell disease.
McCourty is barely two weeks into his offseason, and it’s been two weeks too long for him.
“You can’t harp on it. I think the feeling of a lot of the guys is that we kind of wish the season started again next week so we can get back on the journey, and try to get back to being able to play in this game,” he said on the “Felger and Mazz” show on WBZ-FM 98.5 The Sports Hub.
“But we fell short and we’ll have to watch and see somebody else win a Super Bowl. I think it kind of puts in perspective how special last year was, being able to win it. It also gives you that hunger to win another one.”
McCourty was asked on the program about regrets from a few regular-season games, which, had they unfolded differently, would have given the Patriots home-field advantage throughout the AFC playoffs.
“Obviously, you guys know, we like playing at home. I think every team would rather play at home, just because you’re familiar with everything and you don’t get on a plane and fly across the country. When you do lose, and it’s by one game, you do look back,” he said on the program.
“You look back and say, ‘If we just won this game.’ You can’t look at it that way during the season; you just have to move forward. But after the season, you just look back. You start off 10-0, it’s kind of crazy when you look at a season when you only lost four games. But playing in New England, and having opportunities and the type of team we had, we know how good we can be. So as a team, we do look back and say ‘We wish we would have played better in certain games.’ It just sucked to not close it out the way we wanted.”