Granted, part of his reasoning was reuniting with his former head coach, Mike Vrabel, but the true answer runs much deeper than that.<\/p>\n
\u201cI definitely knew that, obviously, if I wasn\u2019t gonna be back in Chicago, this was my top destination to go to,” Byard told reporters on Thursday. “Not necessarily just because of the relationship I got with Vrabes, and there’s a ton of other coaches and people that’s in this building that I’m very familiar with.<\/p>\n
“I just think the culture of this team, of this organization, obviously a winning culture. I think the pieces that they have in place\u2014whether it’s the quarterback, the secondary, all those things\u2014I think it makes it very attractive to any free agent to wanna come here.\u201d<\/p>\n
Byard signed a one-year, $9 million deal with the Patriots.<\/p>\n
Expert NFL picks: Exclusive betting insights only at USA TODAY.<\/a><\/p>\n He’s an aging safety at 32 years old, but he still has plenty left in the tank, as he showed last year with the Chicago Bears.<\/p>\n More importantly, Byard’s reasoning for joining the team means they are on the right track toward building a winning culture. New England is finally an attractive destination for outside stars again.<\/p>\n Follow Patriots Wire on\u00a0Twitter<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Facebook<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"March 12, 2026, 9:48 p.m. ET First-Team All-Pro safety Kevin Byard revealed the real reason why he chose…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":809486,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2050],"tags":[95878,7,1167,249,2326,2094,6,208,96851,96852,95882,95893,97279,96853,96854,95906,95883,95894,95881],"class_list":{"0":"post-809485","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-england-patriots","8":"tag-accessfree","9":"tag-football","10":"tag-new-england","11":"tag-new-england-patriots","12":"tag-newengland","13":"tag-newenglandpatriots","14":"tag-nfl","15":"tag-patriots","16":"tag-sstssportsnflpatriots","17":"tag-sstsnpatriots","18":"tag-tagamerican-football","19":"tag-tagfacebook","20":"tag-tagkevin-byard","21":"tag-tagmike-vrabel","22":"tag-tagnew-england-patriots","23":"tag-tagoverall-positive","24":"tag-tagsports-news","25":"tag-tagtwitter","26":"tag-typestory"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116220187577648535","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/809485","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=809485"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/809485\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/809486"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=809485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=809485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=809485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/1773379215_812_86371878007-cardis-1.jpg\")