Throughout the 2025 NFL season, SB Nation’s Doug Farrar will write about the game’s Secret Superstars — those players whose performances might slip under the radar for whatever reasons. Let’s take a look at new Patriots edge-rusher Harold Landry III, who completely demolished the Las Vegas Raiders after an offseason in which he was an under-the-radar addition at best. Despite the 20-13 loss, Landry showed every possible attribute he can bring to a defense.
The 2025 New England Patriots were a cauldron
of change. A new head coach in Mike Vrabel, a new (well, old and new) offensive coordinator in Josh McDaniels, a new defensive coordinator in Terrell Williams, and all kinds of new defensive talent with free agents Milton Williams, Robert Spillane, and Carlton Davis. All great potential additions, but in the Patriots’ 20-13 Week 1 loss to the Las Vegas Raiders, it was another defensive addition, and a bit of an afterthought with all the other churn, who defined his role more than anybody else on the field.
That relative afterthought was edge-rusher Harold Landry, the former Tennessee Titan who signed a three-year, $43.5 million contract with $26 million guaranteed to add his talents to the equation. At his peak in the 2021 and 2023 seasons, Landry showed all the characteristics you want in an edge disruptor, but his career has also been interrupted by injuries.
Landry missed the entire 2022 season to a torn ACL, and while his nine sacks and 30 total pressures in the 2024 season were decent enough, it’s not tough to figure out why Landry’s new contract wasn’t a patch on the $87.5 million deal with $35.25 million guaranteed Landry signed with the Titans in 2022.
In the court of public opinion, if Landry was considered at all, he was thought to be a guy with a couple of good seasons validating his status as a second-round pick in the 2018 draft out of Boston College. But with all those new defenders on the Patriots’ roster, it was Williams, the former agent of demolition for the Philadelphia Eagles, who got all the regard and most of the money — a four-year, $104 million contract with $63 million guaranteed. While Williams could call his shot after the Super Bowl, Landry was released by the Titans after his first NFL team accepted the idea of a trade, and released him after no trade came to pass.
Then came the season opener against the Raiders, and what Landry did to poor Las Vegas right tackle D.J. Glaze, and the rest of the right side of the Raiders’ offensive line. Landry had three sacks and eight total pressures in the game, all from the defensive left side, and whether he was looping inside to find the open gap, or simply abusing Glaze outside, the Raiders had no answers for him.
Raiders quarterback Geno Smith still made a ton of deep throws despite all the pressure, because that’s what Geno Smith does. And in the end, the Patriots’ offense couldn’t match those explosives. But Landry did as much as he possibly could to offset the deficits.
“We knew that this game could be a game that we could dominate up front,” Landry said postgame. “I thought T [Terrell Williams] said it best when he had talked to us before the game, how all week, we’re talking about who they have, but they need to be worried about who we have. That really hit me, but we were prepared for this game, and felt like we had a great game plan.
“I felt like for the most part we went out there and executed, we just had too many lapses with X-plays and not really making them earn it. I felt like you can definitely see how dominant we can be up front, and we just have to come in here ready to work tomorrow. It’s the NFL, and it’s onto the next week after you watch the film.”
The “X-plays,” which Vrabel defined as big plays in which the Patriots’ defense got out-schemed by Raiders offensive coordinator Chip Kelly, helped the Raiders win the game. But if Landry keeps having games like this — starting in Week 2 against the Miami Dolphins’ decidedly shaky offensive line — he’ll make that contract look like an extreme bargain, and we’ll be talking about him a lot more as one of the centerpieces of New England’s new defense.
