Cyrus Jones on Patriots’ Super Bowl run: ‘I was part of the team, but I didn’t feel a part of it.’
"I felt embarrassed that these people probably thought they wasted a pick on me."
Despite winning the Super Bowl, the 2016 season has left cornerback Cyrus Jones with a feeling of disappointment.
Jones was the Patriots’ first selection in the 2016 NFL Draft, taken in the second round with the 60th overall pick. Yet — after a regular season marred by injury and fumbles — he never even suited up during the Patriots’ playoff run. In all three wins, he was listed as inactive.
“I’ll never take credit for something I don’t feel I contributed to,” Jones told his hometown paper The Baltimore Sun last week. “I was part of the team, but I didn’t feel a part of it.”
The rookie cornerback was drafted so high in part because of his proven kick- and punt-returning abilities at Alabama. But after winning the starting return jobs for the Patriots earlier this season, Jones fumbled a total of five times. In an Instagram post earlier last week, he wrote that his rookie season was “by far one of the most challenging times in my life.”
“I experienced a lot of pain, disappointment, embarrassment and overall dissatisfaction with myself,” he wrote.
In his interview Thursday with the Sun, Jones said he was surprised how much his struggles in the return game affected his overall reputation, given his belief — as he told Boston.com last summer — that playing cornerback was his primary focus. Nevertheless, his confidence tumbled.
“I honestly felt cursed,” he said. “I reached a point where I didn’t even want to play. I just didn’t have it.”
Jones said he couldn’t even enjoy the Patriots’ historic Super Bowl comeback against the Atlanta Falcons.
“It was hell for me,” he said. “That’s the only way I can describe it. I didn’t feel I deserved to be part of anything that was happening with the team. I felt embarrassed that these people probably thought they wasted a pick on me.”
But as he did in his Instagram post, Jones vowed redemption in 2017. The 23-year-old even canceled a planned family vacation so that he could prepare for next season, according to the Sun.
“No such thing as an offseason for me,” he said. “I didn’t earn it.”
