{"id":904763,"date":"2026-05-29T22:27:15","date_gmt":"2026-05-29T22:27:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/904763\/"},"modified":"2026-05-29T22:27:15","modified_gmt":"2026-05-29T22:27:15","slug":"underrated-patriots-dt-sends-strong-message-ahead-of-2026-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/904763\/","title":{"rendered":"Underrated Patriots DT sends strong message ahead of 2026 season"},"content":{"rendered":"

New England Patriots<\/a> defensive tackle Cory Durden<\/a> is confident heading into his fourth NFL season. He even went as far as saying it would be his “best year” in a social media post on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Durden was one of the great turnaround stories in the league last year. He was initially signed to the Patriots<\/a>‘ practice squad, but he worked his way up the depth chart and served as a rotational piece along the defensive line. Through 17 games, he started in four of them, racking up 30 tackles and five tackles for loss.<\/p>\n

Advertisement<\/p>\n

“Year 4 gone be my best year,” Durden posted on X.<\/p>\n

The Patriots clearly liked him enough to give him meaningful snaps down the stretch, including in the playoffs and Super Bowl LX.<\/p>\n

Durden’s emergence at the defensive tackle position might have been one of the reasons why the team was comfortable with letting Khyiris Tonga<\/a> walk in free agency. With Tonga gone, the former Florida State standout should see a significant increase in his snap count.<\/p>\n

Follow Patriots Wire on\u00a0Twitter<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Facebook<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This article originally appeared on Patriots Wire: Underrated Patriots DT sends strong message ahead of 2026 season<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New England Patriots defensive tackle Cory Durden is confident heading into his fourth NFL season. He even went…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":904764,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2050],"tags":[59436,1156,2793,7,11817,1167,249,2326,2094,6,208],"class_list":["post-904763","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-england-patriots","tag-cory-durden","tag-defensive-line","tag-defensive-tackle","tag-football","tag-khyiris-tonga","tag-new-england","tag-new-england-patriots","tag-newengland","tag-newenglandpatriots","tag-nfl","tag-patriots"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116660223555336498","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/904763","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=904763"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/904763\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/904764"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=904763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=904763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=904763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}