For most of the past two weeks, Kyle Dugger sat at home.

He lied on his couch or in bed. Anywhere he could pop his right leg up. A hard cast encased his foot and ankle.

Underneath the cast, stitches run up the ankle, reminders of a lost year and recent operation.

On Jan. 9, the longtime Patriots safety underwent tightrope surgery to re-stabilize an injured right ankle that worsened as the season progressed. Initially diagnosed as a mild sprain in late September, Dugger was told two weeks later he’d developed a bone bruise. Two months after that, around Christmas, he was informed he needed surgery often used to treat severe high ankle sprains.

By then, Dugger’s play, mirroring the rest of the Patriots’ defense, had bottomed out.

This season, he missed a career-high 13 tackles. He allowed opposing quarterbacks to enjoy close to a perfect passer rating when targeting him in coverage. He graded out as a third-worst safety in football at Pro Football Focus, among those who saw at least 200 defensive snaps.

“I felt like I let the team down. And it was challenging because mentally, I couldn’t check out and recover,” Dugger told the Herald. “Guys were still looking to me, and I still needed to watch film and help guys see things and make plays, things that I felt like a good captain, a good leader, would do. And I was struggling because I was dealing with my own frustrations about not being able to play and not understanding why.

“Being told, basically, a sprain was keeping me back. And I’m just like, this doesn’t make sense.”

Dugger originally hurt the ankle with eight seconds left in the first quarter of the Patriots’ blowout loss at San Francisco. He’d leapt in the air to block a 49ers field goal attempt and landed with most of his body weight on his right ankle, which rolled. That was Week 4.

Two weeks later, Dugger declared himself fit enough to play against Houston, a game when he tweaked the ankle again.

“I honestly believe I should have taken another week off,” he admitted. “Then after Jacksonville (in Week 7), after I played that game, it kind of took a different turn as far as the pain. That went up pretty significantly from what it had come down to.”

However, the pain didn’t stem from a bone bruise, as he was told. Dugger claims he was slowly experiencing a high ankle sprain, where the ligaments connecting his right tibia and fibula began tearing and eventually tore completely.

“It was the ligament detaching. So it was actually getting worse then while I played on it, and I didn’t know,” Dugger said. “I was told it was a bone bruise, which caused inflammation, and it caused the injury to get worse. And I had no idea.”

Days after that loss to the Jaguars, Dugger aggravated the ankle during a Friday walkthrough practice and missed the next three games. He eventually returned for a mid-November loss to the Rams, when he failed to make a single solo tackle and finished with just three assisted stops. He tallied two pass breakups for the rest of the year.

The Patriots never placed him on injured reserve, as Dugger insisted that he play and grappled with the consequences of his decision.

“I have to answer to my play not being up to par and not up to what I know it can be like. I have to answer to it, and I have to be accountable,” he said. “Initially, it’d be easy to use (the injury) as an excuse, you know? But the reality is I’m deciding to be out there. That’s what comes with the business, and it’s the decision I decided to make.

“So it was challenging at times, for sure, but once I made up my mind that that’s what I was going to do, I had to stand on it.”

Dugger insisted that living up to his new 4-year, $58 million extension did not factor into the decision to keep playing.

Neither did the availability of fellow safety Jabrill Peppers, who missed several games on the commissioner’s exempt list following an October arrest on domestic violence and drug charges.

“It was early in the season, I wanted to play and get some wins, help the defense get wins,” he said. “The biggest thing was just helping a team, because I feel like I have an impact. If I’m out there, I could do some good.”

Little good came from Dugger’s next game, a 34-15 loss at Miami. He was visibly limited, and his secondary slow to react and communicate. The Dolphins scored on four straight drives in the second quarter en route to a 24-point halftime lead, exploiting Dugger and almost every other member of the Patriots’ defense.
“I knew something was up. I just knew it wasn’t a regular ankle sprain,” he said. “You know, despite what was being said or described, I knew it wasn’t regular. So I just kind of had a feeling back in my head, kind of a pit of my stomach, that it was something deeper, with the hope that it would heal up and I was able to feel like myself.”

In December, Dugger continued to undergo daily treatment. He stole time in the early mornings, between meetings and before leaving the facility on Fridays. The coaching staff curtailed his workload in practice.

“I was getting it flushed out with a mobility circuit and then strengthening to activate the muscles around it. And then I would take medicine, basically an anti-inflammatory, to calm it down,” Dugger said. “And that was every day for the rest of the season.”

By the time the Patriots informed him surgery was unavoidable, Dugger felt it was a long time coming. Even playing in the box, where he needed to cover less ground than free safety, had grown difficult. His agility and explosion were gone, just like his long speed.

The next weekend, the Patriots took a 40-7 loss on the chin from the Chargers. That defeat changed the immediate direction of the franchise, leading ownership to fire Jerod Mayo as head coach just days later.

Reflecting on the lost season, Dugger pinned the Patriots’ struggles on a mix of inexperience and lack of leadership.

“It’s tough to put it on one thing,” he said. “I know for myself there were times where I didn’t do the best job as far as being a leader and trying to pull certain guys in the group and bridge the gap (in leadership). But we as a group, we had a lot of growing to do, especially with the losses we had, like (linebacker Ja’Whaun) Bentley.

He continued: “We needed guys that needed to step up confidently into those types of roles, but the reality is we missed (Bentley’s) presence. So it was tough trying to fill certain spots, and we just needed to grow up collectively and figure out how to pick it up. And that’s a group thing. You can’t really rely on one guy to fix things like that. It was a group thing. We just needed to grow up.”

It’s unknown whether Dugger will be named a captain again in 2025 under new coach Mike Vrabel. Team sources expressed shortly after the season that locker-room leadership is as obvious a place for improvement as wide receiver or offensive line. Dugger said he has spoken with Vrabel since his hiring and came away encouraged by their conversation.

“(Vrabel) was really positive,” Dugger shared. “From the small talk we had and his energy, he seems like a genuine dude that wants to come in, win and put us in the best position to do so, which is all I can hope for as a player. So I’m excited to move forward.”

For now, moving forward means walking in a boot. Dugger swapped out his cast for a boot on Thursday and expects a maximum recovery of four months, with a timeline of three to three and a half months looking more likely. That would make him available for the final weeks of OTAs and perhaps minicamp.

Running, cutting, jumping.

Finally feeling like himself again.