{"id":38922,"date":"2018-03-16T18:50:10","date_gmt":"2018-03-16T22:50:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lwosonnfl.ms.lastwordonsports.com\/?p=38922"},"modified":"2018-03-16T19:14:36","modified_gmt":"2018-03-16T23:14:36","slug":"adrian-clayborn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/2018\/03\/16\/adrian-clayborn\/","title":{"rendered":"Adrian Clayborn Signs With the New England Patriots"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>After losing a number of key players in free agency, the <a href=\"https:\/\/lwosonnfl.ms.lastwordonsports.com\/nfl-teams\/patriots\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">New England Patriots<\/a>\u00a0have struck back. The team has signed defensive end <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.pro-football-reference.com\/players\/C\/ClayAd00.htm?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Adrian Clayborn<\/a><\/strong>, formerly of the <a href=\"https:\/\/lwosonnfl.ms.lastwordonsports.com\/nfl-teams\/falcons\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Atlanta Falcons<\/a>. The contract is for two-years and worth $12 million.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Patriots reached agreement with former Falcons\u2019 DE Adrian Clayborn, per source.<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/AdamSchefter\/status\/974777378386927617?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">March 16, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">The <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/Patriots?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">#Patriots<\/a> are signing <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/Falcons?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">#Falcons<\/a> free agent DE Adrian Clayborn to a 2-year deal worth $12M, source said.<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Ian Rapoport (@RapSheet) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/RapSheet\/status\/974784663591051267?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">March 16, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h1>New England Patriots Sign Adrian Clayborn<\/h1>\n<p>Clayborn has been a key player for the Falcons during his three years with the team. He is one of the top free agents at his position this off-season, and rightfully so. Clayborn is most known for his six-sack performance versus the <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonprofootball.com\/nfl-teams\/cowboys\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Dallas Cowboys<\/a> earlier this year. During his time with the Falcons he was a rotation player. He played left defensive end and started two games this season. He appeared in all the Falcons games, however. This year he showed how dominant he can be off the edge and how he can provide pressure on the quarterback often.<\/p>\n<p>Clayborn was drafted in the first round (20<sup>th<\/sup> overall) by the <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonprofootball.com\/nfl-teams\/buccaneers\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Tampa Bay Buccaneers<\/a>. He spent his first four seasons in the NFL with the Bucs and had an up and down career there. During his time, he only played two full seasons with them, his rookie season and in 2013. The other two seasons he was injured and didn\u2019t play more than three games. During his time in Tampa, he managed 13 sacks and 74 tackles.<\/p>\n<p>Clayborn then hit the free agent market and ended up signing with the Bucs&#8217; division rivals in the Falcons. While in Atlanta he recorded 17 sacks and 50 tackles. Clayborn initially signed a one-year, $1 million deal with the team. Then they re-signed him to a\u00a0team-friendly two-year, $8.5 million deal in 2015. He had a career year in sacks this season, finishing the year with 9.5 sacks. He was a good complimentary off the edge with his fellow teammate <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.pro-football-reference.com\/players\/R\/ReedBr00.htm?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Brooks Reed<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>Clayborn was a big-time playmaker in college with Iowa. He was a four-year starter for the Hawkeyes and finished his career with 19 sacks, 37.5 tackles for a loss, and 192 total tackles.<\/p>\n<p><a id=\"Sp2fEkBFQ2lCsoFLltxEHA\" class=\"gie-single\" style=\"color: #a7a7a7; text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal !important; border: none; display: inline-block;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/888027850\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><script>window.gie=window.gie||function(c){(gie.q=gie.q||[]).push(c)};gie(function(){gie.widgets.load({id:'Sp2fEkBFQ2lCsoFLltxEHA',sig:'YU1iKVWClBh5NZP-yDP_mAkWDJxQH3Bqa91NdZiQTNA=',w:'594px',h:'431px',items:'888027850',caption: true ,tld:'com',is360: false })});<\/script><script src='\/\/embed-cdn.gettyimages.com\/widgets.js' charset='utf-8' async><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Adrian Clayborn made headlines during the 2017 regular season when he tallied a whopping six sacks in a Week 10 win over the Dallas Cowboys. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2470,"featured_media":38948,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[27,5,36],"tags":[3636,115,61,38,40,1173],"class_list":["post-38922","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-falcons","category-patriots","category-nfl-news","tag-adrian-clayborn","tag-atlanta-falcons","tag-football","tag-new-england-patriots","tag-nfl","tag-nfl-draft"],"modified_by":"Ben Kerr","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38922","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2470"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38922"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38922\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38948"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}