Five players were absent from the New England Patriots’ first training camp practice on Saturday, including starting outside linebacker Harold Landry. The team captain had been placed on the physically unable to perform list leading up to camp, and his status remains unclear.
Speaking to reporters on Friday, Mike Vrabel was unable to give any concrete updates either. In fact, the Patriots’ head coach even refrained from ruling out the issue impacting Landry’s regular season availability.
“I’m not going
to predict that. I’m not going to pretend to predict that,” Vrabel said. “Where Harold is at the start of the season, I wouldn’t be able to tell you right now. He won’t be practicing, but he’ll be working, and hopefully we’ll get him back.”
Landry arrived in New England last offseason on a three-year, $43.5 million contract. He had an encouraging start to his first season with the club, but a knee injury kept bothering him down the stretch.
After playing 78.7% of defensive snaps and registering 6.5 sacks and a forced fumble over the first half of the season, he was limited to 33.8% and two quarterback takedowns after playing through the knee injury in a Week 12 contest versus the Bengals. In total, he finished his first season with 18 games and a 56.7% playing time share.
Landry was a limited during offseason workouts earlier this spring, and did not participate during any of the three mandatory minicamp practices. For his coach, this is all part of the unfortunate nature of the game.
“We’re going to talk about injuries that could happen, they’re 100% in football,” Vrabel explained. “At some point and time everybody’s going to get hurt. The expectation is they all work extremely hard to get back. That they’re where they’re supposed to be when they’re supposed to be there. They focus on what they can do as opposed to what they can’t do. I’m very confident with our return‑to‑play.”
Vrabel and the other players on the PUP or non-football injury lists — RB Terrell Jennings, TE C.J. Dippre, S Brenden Schooler — can be activated at any point during training camp.
