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With the Washington Commanders coming out of minicamp, ready to make a splash this upcoming season after being one game away from a Super Bowl berth, an underrated acquisition was defensive end Deatrich Wise Jr., a former New England Patriot. While the Commanders are hoping for breakouts in the 2025 season, the team is also looking for Wise to bring some veteran presence to a younger team, bringing knowledge from playing under legendary head coach Bill Belichick.
Wise would be on “The John Keim Report,” where he would be asked about what he learned under Belichick, and as the 30-year-old player explained the “wisdom” received, he would see similarities in Washington's head coach, Dan Quinn.
“So the wisdom that I have accumulated over those years, it has been those things that I keep saying,” Wise said. “But also one of the things Bill [Belichick] always said was ‘practice execution becomes game reality.' That's one thing I've always taken to heart. Practice as hard as I can and exactly how I want the game to be. That's what makes great teams great.”
“And I feel like that's the first two things I heard being talked about when I got to the Commanders by Coach [Joe] Whitt [Jr.] [defensive coordinator, and also by Coach DQ [Quinn],” Wise continued. “They both was like, ‘We have to be able to practice the same way we want to have happen in the game.' So I was like saying the same thing. So they're echoing success every single day that we're in that building.”
What Deatrich West Jr. is bringing to the Commanders
As the Commander's veteran looks to produce for the team and bring them to the next level, there is no doubt that Wise has experienced major success with New England. Playing with the Patriots since 2017, where he was a fourth-round pick, he was a part of the 2018 Super Bowl-winning team, though the time post-Tom Brady was not up to the standard.
“So to sit here and talk about what went wrong, what didn't happen over the last eight years, we'll be here for three hours,” Wise said on the Patriots' recent struggles. “In a nutshell, it's a number of things that went right and went really wrong for both teams in each game that led us to the record that we had after 2019.”
Still, the lessons learned by Belichick are superbly valuable.
“Techniques, fundamentals, the bigger the moment, the more you rely on techniques and fundamentals, being able to stop the run, gather the pass rusher as a defender, building tough, smart, and dependable players,” Wise said about what he learned from Belichick.
At any rate, Washington looks to further improve after finishing with a 12-5 record, finishing second in the NFC East before being eliminated in the conference title by the Philadelphia Eagles.
