Joe Cardona exemplified what it meant to be part of the Patriots, and that was true after New England released the 33-year-old.<\/p>\n
Of course, Cardona\u2019s story was inspiring as an active member of the Navy Reserve, but he was a true leader throughout his decade at One Patriot Place.<\/p>\n
That was why it came as a slight surprise that the Patriots released the veteran<\/a>. The move seemed inevitable<\/a> after New England drafted Julian Ashby<\/a> in the seventh round of the 2025 NFL Draft, but Cardona\u2019s release fully cut ties to<\/a> the franchise\u2019s last Super Bowl team. What shouldn\u2019t be a surprise was how Cardona left Foxboro, Mass<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen long-snapper Joe Cardona was released early last week after 10 years with the Patriots, he made the rounds inside Gillette Stadium to say goodbye to various team employees with whom he\u2019d developed a connection over the past decade,\u201d ESPN\u2019s Mike Reiss wrote in a column Sunday. \u201cPart of that included Cardona, who was choking up at times, joining a meeting of the Patriots\u2019 content team to say thank you.<\/p>\n \u201c\u2018In my 30 years here, we\u2019ve never had a (released) player come up and do that,\u2019 Fred Kirsch, publisher and VP of content, said on the \u2018Patriots Unfiltered\u2019 show.\u201d<\/p>\n Story continues below advertisement<\/p>\n Cardona\u2019s release symbolized the change Mike Vrabel wanted to instill in his Patriots team, and it will be up to a new generation of players to build on the culture that others set for over a quarter century.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Joe Cardona exemplified what it meant to be part of the Patriots, and that was true after New…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23885,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2050],"tags":[7,6305,1167,249,2326,2094,6,208],"class_list":{"0":"post-23884","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-england-patriots","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-joe-cardona","10":"tag-new-england","11":"tag-new-england-patriots","12":"tag-newengland","13":"tag-newenglandpatriots","14":"tag-nfl","15":"tag-patriots"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114451273960743917","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23884","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23884"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23884\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23885"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}