said<\/a> on Monday. \u201cHe\u2019s strong, he\u2019s got good size, good strength. And he doesn\u2019t just have to be a fast, athletic corner. It\u2019s hard to take and say that the corners in this league aren\u2019t going to have to tackle. They\u2019re going to have to tackle when they hand the football off. <\/p>\n\u201cWe don\u2019t want them to every single play, but there\u2019s times where they have to, they have to crack replace, they have to close the distance, they have to stay on their feet and tackle. And you\u2019ve seen it the other way where we\u2019ve been able to get out there or get on some DBs and they\u2019ve missed tackles, and those turn into X plays. And so, I appreciate Gonzo (Christian Gonzalez) doing that.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Patriots selected Gonzalez 17th overall in 2023, and he\u2019s been a shutdown corner since coming into the NFL.<\/p>\n
Story continues below advertisement<\/p>\n
According to PFF, Gonzalez finished the year allowing a 46.1% catch rate, which was the third-lowest in the league, as well as giving up just one touchdown. The star cornerback also had 57 tackles and seven pass breakups.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Gonzalez will have a key role for the Patriots\u2019 defense on Sunday against the Chargers. Kick-off is set for 8 p.m. ET on Sunday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New England Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel has plenty of praise for cornerback Christian Gonzalez. The Patriots are…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":660310,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2050],"tags":[6032,7,838,1167,249,2326,2094,6,208],"class_list":{"0":"post-660309","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-england-patriots","8":"tag-christian-gonzalez","9":"tag-football","10":"tag-mike-vrabel","11":"tag-new-england","12":"tag-new-england-patriots","13":"tag-newengland","14":"tag-newenglandpatriots","15":"tag-nfl","16":"tag-patriots"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115852172722745386","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660309","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=660309"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660309\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/660310"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=660309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=660309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=660309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}