Will Campbell: I feel I did a good job rebuilding strength in my knee

Patriots left tackle Will Campbell offered an update on how his knee is feeling when he spoke to reporters from the team's facility on Tuesday.

Campbell opted not to speak to the media in the immediate aftermath of New England's Super Bowl loss to the Seahawks, which he later said was because he was emotional after playing poorly and allowing Drake Maye to be pressured 14 times in the game. When Campbell did speak, he also revealed that he had torn a ligament in his knee during the regular season.

Campbell did not have surgery and said his focus on rehab has him feeling back to full strength heading into his second season. michezonews.co.za

"After the season, my No. 1 goal was just take a couple of days away and just assess everything with the coaches," Campbell said. "Pinpoint down the things I do really well and then things I need to get better at. Getting back healthy, I did PT five days a week the entire offseason until we got back basically. Just trying to rebuild the strength in my knee to get it back to where it was previously and I feel like I did a good job of that."

There were questions about Campbell's ability to be an NFL left tackle heading into the draft, but he quieted many of them during the regular season. The Super Bowl was part of a dreadful playoff run that he and the Patriots are hoping was simply about his injury rather than an upgrade in the competition the Patriots faced after a relatively light regular season slate.

Rams General Manager Les Snead says the Myles Garrett trade was months in the making.

Snead said at Garrett's introductory press conference in Los Angeles that he and head coach Sean McVay started talking about making big moves to improve the defense as soon as the offseason started.

"How did we end up with Myles Garrett sitting between Sean and myself? When Sean and I met for the first time to talk about the offseason, we did discuss how we could add to the defense," Snead said.

Adding to the defense is one thing. Adding the NFL's reigning Defensive Player of the Year is something else, something that Snead first thought would be possible in March, when Garrett and the Browns modified Garrett's contract in a way that made him easier to trade. Snead says he called Browns General Manager Andrew Berry as soon as that happened to get a sense for whether the Browns were signaling with that contract change Garrett would be available in a trade.

"When Cleveland made the adjustment to his contract, not sure if it was a signal, they made an adjustment," Snead said. "I've got a good relationship with Andrew Berry, thought I'd just check in. Let's check in. Myles, he's a Cleveland Brown, he's on their Mount Rushmore, so they were a no. But Andrew and I have a good relationship, we like talking about football a good bit, so I would pester him a little bit, probably jokingly at first, then we began talking a little more seriously."

Snead said Berry turned down his offers of a package of draft picks for Garrett, but the Browns were willing to consider it if the Rams would trade Jared Verse, a talented young pass rusher.

"We tried to do this with draft compensation, then the draft came and went," Snead said. "We picked talks back up, we tried to discuss more draft compensation. At the end of the day, and where it got a little tough for us, is they asked for Jared Verse in return. And similar to Cleveland at first, we were a no, based on all that Jared's done for our organization. During May, we kept trying, we tried to figure out a solution, but as the June 1 date came, as it was getting closer, probably some time late May, we had a decision to make. We knew where Cleveland stood, they knew where we stood, and we proceeded to make the trade."

Snead said he was also aware of Garrett's no-trade clause, which would have allowed him to refuse the trade.

"Myles had a no-trade clause," Snead said. "I remember asking Andrew after about a month of talking, 'Myles has a no-trade clause, are we going to have gone through all this and he's going to say no?'"

Garrett didn't say no, and Snead finally made his long-awaited trade.