When Jacoby Brissett first reached out to Patriots safety Devin McCourty for advice on how to speak up on social injustices, he was doing so on behalf of a teammate. Brissett, who spent his rookie year in New England, had kept in close touch with McCourty after he was traded to the Indianapolis Colts in 2017, and thought the veteran would be an ideal resource.
“His first response was, ‘You do it,’ ” Brissett recalled via telephone earlier this season.
The answer struck a chord.
Brissett had been thinking about how the Colts needed someone on the team to speak up against racial inequality following the killings of George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man who pleaded that he couldn’t breathe while a Minnesota police officer knelt on his neck, and Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old Black man who was shot seven times in the back by police in Kenosha, Wis.
That push from McCourty gave Brissett the confidence to do it himself.
“When he said that, that stuck with me,” Brissett said. “It was kind of like him — not passing the torch, but him giving me the ball to go.’”
In August, the Colts were among the several NFL teams to cancel practice in response to Blake’s shooting. When they returned to work the following day, Brissett, wearing a Black Lives Matter shirt, spoke to the media with his teammates and coaching staff behind him.
In his remarks, he expressed the team’s collective hurt and shared how they had used the time away to reflect on their emotions as well as pledge to make a difference moving forward.
“I was more nervous after Dev told me to do it just because I didn’t want to let him down,” said Brissett. “Once I did it, I reached back out to him and said, ‘What’d you think of that?’ He was like a proud big brother, so I knew I was doing the right thing.”
During his time with the Patriots, Brissett forged a close bond with McCourty. He admired the way McCourty conducted himself on and off the field, and noticed that others often turned to him for answers. Whenever he had down time in the locker room, Brissett wanted to have conversations with McCourty, even to just shoot the breeze.
“From the start, Dev kind of took me under his wing and became that big brother role for me in the NFL,” Brissett said. “You always hear about the stories: ‘When you get to the NFL find a veteran and just do what they do.’ You wish to find the right one and I think I found the right one in following Devin.”
For McCourty, those relationships are very important.
“I try to be an example for guys who first come into the league of how you can have a huge impact off the field and on the field,” McCourty said in December after earning his fourth nomination for Walter Payton Man of the Year award, an honor that goes to a player with “outstanding community service activities off the field, as well as excellence on the field.”
McCourty, now entering his 12th NFL season, contemplated retirement after the Patriots won Super Bowl LIII two years ago, his third championship overall and first with his twin brother Jason. But he ultimately decided to return for the following two seasons and already has said he plans to play in 2021, too.
While his contributions in the secondary cannot be understated — he’s one of the team’s top-performing defensive backs and hasn’t missed a game over the past five seasons — McCourty’s presence in the locker room cannot be ignored.
Take former teammate Duron Harmon as another example. The two played seven seasons together in New England and go back even further, meeting when Harmon was a freshman and McCourty a fifth-year senior at Rutgers. Like Brissett, Harmon immediately identified McCourty as someone he wanted to emulate for his accountability on and off the field.
As a Patriot, Harmon participated in social-justice efforts alongside the McCourty brothers and Matthew Slater, from visiting a courthouse to observe pretrial hearings to testifying in support of the Education PROMISE Act.
“I was always the guy sending out the text messages and the emails, so I know sometimes those guys would look at their phone and be like, ‘Here goes Dev again with something else he’s asking us to do,’ ” McCourty said. “I’ve asked a lot of those guys and they never let me down. They always step up, and they always are trying to do more.”
After he was traded to the Detroit Lions, Harmon took a leading role in the team’s response to Blake’s shooting. The Lions also canceled practice, and Harmon was one of the players to speak passionately about why they cannot remain silent. Harmon, who communicates with McCourty daily, made sure to seek his guidance ahead of that day.
“He’s a guy I rely on for life advice in all areas,” Harmon said via telephone. “When you’re around him, when you talk to him, when you have that relationship with him, all he does is — and it’s not by his words, it’s by his actions — he challenges you to be the best that you can be.
Brissett, Harmon, and McCourty have a group message, where they’ll chat about life and bounce ideas off one another. Brissett says McCourty now is even asking him for advice.
With athletes across all sports working to determine the best way to use their platforms in the fight against social injustice, some have questioned the value of gestures such as kneeling during the national anthem or canceling practice because they’ve been done before and little has changed.
During his season-end remarks, Patriots coach Bill Belichick called the past year “very educational” because of the team’s social justice meetings, and credited McCourty as one of the leaders.
As players and coaches work collectively to find a solution, and learn what’s effective versus what isn’t, McCourty suspects that the NFL probably won’t be of much assistance.
“I think for us as players, and as teams individually, we have to look to do it on our own,” he said. “I wouldn’t look to the NFL. I think the NFL is always going to put their interests in front of everything. They’ll try, they’ll try to do some things, but I think ultimately, as individuals, it’s up to you. The more individuals you pull in, the better it can be.”
The relationships McCourty has formed have proven to have a real impact.
“I always felt like the way that he kind of took me under his wing is what I want to be for somebody else, whoever it is, whoever it might be,” said Brissett.
Nicole Yang can be reached at nicole.yang@globe.com. Follow her on X @nicolecyang.