The veteran linebacker is the next man up following Ja’Whaun Bentley’s season-ending pectoral injury.
Raekwon McMillan knows the feeling of ending a season on the sidelines.
The veteran linebacker has had to deal with his fair share of injuries since entering the NFL in 2017. Out of his seven possible seasons, McMillan saw four come to a premature end — including two of his first three after joining the New England Patriots as a free agent.
From that perspective, he can emphasize with teammate Ja’Whaun Bentley; the starting linebacker and four-year captain suffered a season-ending pectoral injury in Week 2 against the Seattle Seahawks. What McMillan also understands, however, is the nature of the game: it’s looking forward, and calling for the next man to step up.
Given his position on the depth chart, the next man after Bentley is McMillan himself. And he is well aware that this is an opportunity to get his career back on track.
“It’s coming at the expense of my brother being down, but I’d say it’s an opportunity for me,” McMillan told reporters in the Gillette Stadium locker room on Tuesday.
“It’s a new chapter. It’s a new part of my career. Hopefully, I can finish it off the right way — really finish it off.”
A second-round selection by the Miami Dolphins in the 2017 draft, McMillan missed his rookie season because of a torn ACL. He returned a 16-game starter as a sophomore, but saw his third year come to an end with a hamstring issue.
Following a one-year stint in Las Vegas, McMillan arrived in New England in 2021. The team had high hopes for him, but another ACL tear robbed him of his first season as a Patriot. When he returned the following year, he was primarily a role and special teams player before an Achilles injury suffered during OTAs knocked him out again in early 2023.
Throughout his injury woes, however, the Patriots continued to show confidence in McMillan. They signed him to contract extensions in both 2021 and 2023 after he had gone down injured.
With Bentley now out for the year, the team will hope that those investments will start to show some return soon. And given his usage against the Seahawks, they just might. McMillan, after all, is now the No. 2 off-ball linebacker behind the new No. 1, Jahlani Tavai.
“When my brother went down, I didn’t know what was going on but my preparation never changed,” McMillan explained. “Week 1 I didn’t play any snaps on defense, and then the next week I played 40-plus snaps. It is the same preparation. I went through the same type of mental process that I went through throughout the week, and it paid off with my extra conditioning as if I was going to play. Didn’t know if I was going to play. I didn’t know how many plays I was going to play. But when I got a chance, I took advantage of it.”
Despite being a veteran of 63 NFL games, including 18 as a Patriot, McMillan’s starting opportunities have been limited as of late. He has just one on his New England résumé, and started only five total games over his last four seasons combined.
On Thursday night against the New York Jets, that could very well change. But even if he does not draw the start, he is expected to play a big role in the post-Bentley defense.
“We will get the ball rolling,” he said about the defense’s mentality. “We’re not down, we’re not looking at anything that we lost in the past. We’re moving forward. We just focus on things getting better here, and we’ll make things better.”