Matthew Judon believes the Patriots have "unicorns" on defense

FOXBORO -- For the past year, a whole lot of energy has been expended analyzing and assessing the state of the Patriots' offense. Through it all, the strength of the team has been the defense.

And while the offense figures to be much-improved under Bill O'Brien, the defense still should be the backbone of a team that's looking to improve upon last year's 8-9 record.

The early signs are positive in that regard, too, with a clear level of chemistry on display during the team's minicamp sessions this week behind Gillette Stadium. During Tuesday's session, the defense dominated in its reps against the first-team offense, and that came a day after Mac Jones spoke about all the different fronts and schemes the defense has been able to throw at the offense.

While Jones credited Steve Belichick for getting creative with some of the trickery coming from the defense, Matthew Judon had to give credit to a different source.

"We have unicorns," Judon stated confidently. "For real."

Judon expounded upon this conviction. 

"We got a guy like [Kyle] Dugger that can play on the line of scrimmage, at linebacker depth. He can play at corner, but he's a safety. And we drafted players that can play from nose to middle linebacker. You know, we got big rangy corners to corners like Marcus Jones, where he played three, four different positions on each different unit -- offense, defense and special teams. So with that it's not unusual. You gotta get those players on the field, right? And so you find our coaches do a great job of finding any way to get those players in different packages on the field and put them in situations where they can compete and they can win. And that's what they're doing."

Judon, who's coming off a career-high 15.5-sack season, certainly recognizes the talent around him.

"So it's not unusual for that to happen, but it's unusual for us to have these type of players like that," Judon said. "And so if we can keep everybody here, keep everybody healthy -- you know, it's training camp, we have a lot of players. But when we cut everything down, keep everybody healthy. Keep everybody rolling. It's gonna be easy for us to match up with any offensive personnel."