FOXBORO, Mass. — Brandon Tate, your teammates are coming for you.
The Patriots held one of their annual rookie rituals prior to Monday morning's practice when they soaked the field and made the first-year guys dive through it like a slip-and-slide.
Since Tate and linebacker Tyrone McKenzie missed it last year due to their respective knee injuries, they were called out to participate in this one. McKenzie played along, but Tate hid by taking a knee behind the defensive linemen.
"I was trying to hide from everybody," Tate said. "They were calling my name, but I was trying to hide from them. Last year, I didn’t get to do it, so everybody was looking for me this year. I was just hiding from them."
Cornerback Darius Butler and McKenzie each found Tate and tried to get him to dive through the drill, and Julian Edelman was calling for his fellow wide receiver to ante up. Now that Tate failed to play nice, his face will be on most-wanted posters throughout Gillette Stadium.
"We make sure that we try to get everybody," linebacker Rob Ninkovich said. "He might have snuck out of that one, but I'm sure we'll get him in one of our meetings or something, pull him up to the front or something."
"Hey, I had to do it last year," Edelman said. "We're going to get him on here, too. We'll see."
Tate will get his, whether it's a repeat of the hosing or something entirely different. It would have been much easier if he took an easy swim through the grass, but now it's unlikely Tate will see it coming.
"At first, I thought it was just the first-year guys. I consider myself a first-year guy, but I thought it was just the rookies," Tate said. "I was trying to lay low from them. I'm pretty sure Bill [Belichick] is going to find me, though. He's going to make sure I do it."
