wrote on Saturday<\/a> that the Western Michigan product shined on the fourth day of training camp.<\/p>\n\u201cOn Saturday, the veteran linebacker was the star of the\u00a0Patriots\u00a0defense and made life difficult for\u00a0Drake Maye,\u201d Daniels said. \u201cIn the first 11-on-11 period, Spillane broke up the quarterback\u2019s first two passes, defending tight end Hunter Henry and receiver DeMario Douglas. As it turns out, he\u2019s also making an impact off the field.\u201d<\/p>\n
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After his short stay in Tennessee, Spillane spent four seasons with the Pittsburgh Steelers from 2019-2022. He finished his Steelers career with 191 tackles, 10 tackles for loss, eight passes defended and 3.0 sacks across 50 regular season games (16 starts), while adding 14 tackles in two playoff contests.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Spillane signed with the Las Vegas Raiders in March 2023 and posted career highs in quarterback hits (four), sacks (3.5) and interceptions (three) that season. He had another big season in 2024 with the Raiders, registering career highs in tackles (158), tackles for loss (10) and passes defended (seven). Spillane\u2019s 158 takedowns were tied for third-most in the NFL last year.<\/p>\n
The former Raiders captain joined New England on a three-year, $33 million contract and has \u201ctaken a leadership role\u201d in his early days with the Patriots, according to Daniels. The beat writer spoke with linebacker Christian Ellis about Spillane\u2019s impact on the squad.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery single time we talk about pre-practice stuff. He\u2019s out here \u2014 he\u2019s like a golden retriever. He\u2019s just high energy,\u201d Elliss said, per Daniels. \u201cHe\u2019s fun to be around. He\u2019s just someone you love. He\u2019s someone you\u2019d play your heart out for. He\u2019s someone who will bring this defense together.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Daniels added that the newcomer\u2019s been a \u201cmainstay\u201d in the new coach\u2019s defense since the first open practice.<\/p>\n
Now playing under Vrabel again, expectations are high for Spillane in his first year with the Patriots.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After six seasons apart, Mike Vrabel and Robert Spillane reunited this offseason when the former was hired as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":39798,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[349,32295,99],"class_list":["post-39797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-nfl","tag-robert-spillane","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39797","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39797"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39797\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}