Patriots DT Christian Barmore, out since July with blood clots, calls return vs. Rams ‘a blessing’
“I’m a soldier, so I told myself I wasn’t going to let this beat me.”
Having missed much of the season after being diagnosed with blood clots over the summer, Patriots defensive tackle Christian Barmore returned to the field on Sunday for his first game action of the year in New England’s loss to the Rams.
Barmore made three tackles while anchoring the interior of New England’s defensive line, where he had been making his name as one of the league’s most disruptive forces before the diagnosis put his career on hold.
“The blood clots are no joke,” he said Sunday. “I had real bad shortness of breath, and it messed with me a lot. Mentally, I had my teammates, the medical team. … My teammates really supported the hell out of me, and I love them all. I told myself I was not going to lose that battle. I told myself I was going to keep going.”
Barmore did have an important figure to lean on — Patriots captain David Andrews, who had to sit out the 2019 season with a blood clot issue of his own.
“That man DA’s a legend,” Barmore said. “He kept my head up, every time I needed to talk to him, every time I had my head down, he came up to me, wanted to talk to me. Especially hearing his story, he just motivated me to keep going even stronger, keep fighting, just to work on myself and make myself a better man.”
Another Patriot familiar with extended time on the sideline is Kendrick Bourne, who returned in Week 5 from an ACL injury suffered last season. Bourne caught his first touchdown of the season on Sunday on a big day for two players who spent the summer trying to get back on the field.
“It’s awesome,” Bourne said of Barmore’s return. “Obviously I went through my ACL and the process of just being on the lower field, and going through that whole process was tough. I just told him it was awesome to see him back out there. He’s frustrated too, you know, obviously we [didn’t] win, but it’s just, you’ve got to think about the bigger picture.
“So I just told him, you know, keep being grateful that you’re out there. You know, maybe you didn’t make a lot of plays or whatever, I don’t know. I’m not sure. I’ll watch the film, but just being out there is a start.”
Barmore, the 6-foot-5, 315-pound lineman, saw his production explode in 2023. He recorded career-high 8 ½ sacks, the most by a Patriots defensive tackle since Ray Hamilton in 1977. The Patriots viewed him as a future star up front, inking the Alabama product to a four-year deal worth up to $92 million in April.
Then came the news in July that Barmore would be out indefinitely, with no clear timetable for his return.
While sidelined, Barmore ran into some trouble in October after a traffic stop in Providence, where he was seen on body camera footage behaving confrontationally with police. Barmore later apologized for the incident.
Just a month after the incident, Barmore was back on the field at Gillette Stadium after being cleared by doctors earlier in the week.
“Man, it was a blessing of God,” Barmore said. “First, they said I was probably going to miss the year, and that hurt. When they said that [he was cleared], I was really excited, I was anxious, I couldn’t go to sleep because I was so excited.
“[I learned] not to take anything for granted. I could’ve lost my life. When the doctor told me that … I got closer with God, [wondering] why this happened to me, but God makes no mistakes, God brings his toughest battles to his toughest soldiers. I’m a soldier, so I told myself I wasn’t going to let this beat me.”
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