FOXBOROUGH – At one point during Monday’s first of two mandatory minicamp practices, Harold Landry beat Morgan Moses so quickly and cleanly off the edge that you legitimately had to question whether he was offsides.
He wasn’t. Drake Maye had to roll out and ultimately tuck it to the sideline.
The whole no pads until training camp thing is tough to shake when you watch the way Landry has flashed as a pass rusher at times during OTAs and then again on Monday. The former BC Eagle and seven-year vet looks as fast as he did when he was playing in Chestnut Hill.
“I feel faster now than I did in my whole career, to be honest,” he said during a media scrum following practice. “Hey, turn back the clock a little bit, you know what I’m sayin?”
Landry’s decision to come back to a place he knows extremely well wasn’t just because of the money, although that always helps. The familiarity while moving a family takes some weight off a player’s shoulders when there isn’t that full ‘starting over’ aspect.
I asked Landry whether or not that’s helped him get assimilated quicker in the locker room and on the field too, since it certainly looks that way.
“I’d say it’s been fairly easy,” he said. “My family was just out here with me for like, the past 10 days. We’ve had a blast. I feel like it’s been fairly easy, just the familiarity with the area and all around here. It’s been a smooth transition.”
Landry still hasn’t been back inside Alumni Stadium yet, but did take another drive through campus with his wife recently and he was stunned by one thing.
“We drove…I ain’t gonna lie though. The one thing that has surprised me…I’m not gonna lie. The one thing that’s surprised me is the traffic,” he said with a big smile.
“I thought it would be a little bit better than Nashville, but it’s around there. But nah, it’s alright. We actually drove through (campus) the other day again. It was more of me and my wife reminiscing about where we met and stuff like that. My son seeing the stadium and all that.”
Landry is comfortable, which is often the biggest adjustment for free agents. If his play on the field looks anything like it has so far (in a very limited sample size, of course), then he’ll soon be a household name and a popular jersey for kids in this region once again.