Corey Dillon doesn’t appreciate his reputation as a reformed Patriot

Former New England Patriots running back Corey Dillon, often cited as a Bill Belichick reformation project, doesn’t appreciate that label one bit.

Corey Dillon ranks among the greatest running backs in New England Patriots history. His 1,635 rushing yards during the 2004 season is still a franchise record to this day, and considering how much Patriots head coach Bill Belichick currently loves his running back timeshares, it’s also a record that probably won’t soon be broken either.

While Dillon is certainly revered in the New England area for this achievement – and for his role in helping the team capture its third Super Bowl championship – he’s also a little miffed at another aspect of his legacy that continues to endure with the team. Alongside Randy Moss, Albert Haynesworth, Josh Gordon, and now Antonio Brown, Dillon is fairly regularly listed as an example of a player who rejuvenated his career with Belichick’s Patriots after wearing out his welcome elsewhere.

Part of that association comes from Dillon’s own words and actions when he was playing with his old team, the Cincinnati Bengals.

Back in 2001, he publicly called out the owner of the Bengals, memorably telling the press that, “we will never win with the Brown family in Cincinnati.” Just a few years later, he finally got his wish and was shipped east to Foxborough to play for a winning organization.

In the ensuing years since he retired from the NFL in 2007, a popular narrative has developed that Dillon essentially forced his way out of Cincinnati as a malcontent and a distraction to the team. It’s a story and a reputation that Dillon believes is supremely unfair, and he went on the record with The Athletic’s Jay Morrison to clear his name, via NESN’s Michael McMahon.

“I just find it kind of curious every time the Patriots do something, or bring a guy in, my name comes up like I was a bad guy. I’m trying to set that straight,” Dillon told Morrison during a Q&A session. “First of all, if you go back in time, look who I played for at the time. Are you kidding me? People want to say I was the bad guy in that situation? No. That’s not the case.”

Dillon played for the Bengals for seven years, from 1997 until 2003. Over that timespan, he missed just five total games, and he rushed for at least 1,100 yards in his first six seasons.

During that same period of time, the Bengals as a team went 34-78, never made the playoffs, and finished no higher than fourth in their division until 2003, Dillon’s final season with the team.

In other words, perhaps he has a bit of a point in saying he might have been miscast as a villain in trying to leave the Bengals for greener pastures. His argument is that for seven years, he did everything he personally could do as a football player and as a running back to help his team win games. After so much losing though, he’d finally had enough… and that’s when he started to gripe to the media and pine for an exit.

It’s a similar situation in some ways to what LeBron James endured during his first stint in Cleveland with the Cavaliers, or what Odell Beckham Jr. says drove him crazy about playing for a losing team like the New York Giants for so long.

Here’s more from Dillon’s interview:

"“It comes down to we play this football game to actually win football games. That’s what you play for. I don’t know what was on everybody else’s agenda. Me personally, I was never a “me” guy, worried about somebody else’s money, worried about getting paid. My main objective was to win football games and my ultimate goal was to win a championship. That’s what I was in the game for. That was my passion. And if you check, go ask former teammates in Cincinnati, I wasn’t a bad guy in the locker room. My whole thing was, “Hey, listen, I’m tired of losing.” And to sum that up and put it in a corporate America, hypothetical situation, if you had a job where you feel you’re going nowhere and you have an opportunity to better yourself and better your career in a different situation, you’re not going to take that opportunity? But I do it and I’m a cancer. I’m a bad guy. I don’t know how people think that. I don’t get it.”"

It’s hard to argue against Dillon’s logic. By his own admission, he was driven more by a desire to win championships than he ever was to achieve personal statistical greatness or rake in millions of dollars through contracts or sponsorships. And yet somehow along the way, that desire became the selling point on his new label as “a bad guy” or “a cancer” in the locker room… and that’s not really a fair deduction to make in hindsight.