Devin McCourty: 'I Wasn't a Fan' of Aaron Hernandez Netflix Docuseries
One show that has recently grabbed the attention of New England Patriots fans and others interested in the topic is the Netflix documentary that was released last week about former Patriots tight end, Aaron Hernandez, which is called Killer Inside: The Mind of Aaron Hernandez. The three-part docuseries takes you inside the life of Hernandez, who went from being a star player for New England to committing suicide in his jail cell after being accused of multiple murders.
Someone who has watched the Netflix series and did not like what he saw was one of Hernandez's former teammates in New England, Devin McCourty. McCourty, who spoke about the docuseries with his brother, Jason, on their podcast "Double Coverage" didn't like the reaction it caused.
“I wasn’t a fan,” McCourty said on the episode that was published on Jan. 23. “And I think the thing that was really disgusting about the whole thing wasn’t the documentary’s fault per se. But I was listening to the radio today, and because the documentary has come out and now everyone’s talking about ‘Hey, did you see it? What happened?’ the family of Odin Lloyd has received messages via social media, people sending letters, like, telling them they did a horrible thing and they brought Hernandez down.
“And I’m sitting here like, this family lost their son, their brother, their big cousin. A community lost a young man, and people had the audacity to reach out to this guy’s mom and really say stuff like that. Whether that’s your opinion or not — have whatever opinion you want once you watch the documentary, but why go the extra step and make sure your opinion’s heard by someone who’s already dealt with this loss? I’m sure at some point she’s moved on a little bit, and now she’s reliving the whole thing. Because it’s been on the news — it’s just been everywhere.”
McCourty also did not like who they decided to interview for the docuseries. He felt that the people chosen to interview for the show did not know Hernandez well enough to be able to understand what was going on in his head, which is what the name of the docuseries portrays will be accomplished within the three episodes.
“The documentary’s called, like, ‘Getting Into the Mind of Aaron Hernandez.’ How?” McCourty said. “You interview (former Patriots offensive lineman Ryan O’Callaghan), who didn’t know him. You interview Leigh Bodden, who kind of played with him but was on IR. Jermaine Wiggins didn’t play with him. (Chris Borland) from San Francisco, who retired early, linebacker, didn’t play with him. I don’t even think he was in the league until, like, two or three years after all of this happened. And then you had a bunch of people from high school — from the way-back past.
"So it was like, all right, we got the high school. We got some of the early life. We already got that, though. We already knew that. There was no bridge. I just felt like the documentary had (an angle) like, ‘We want people to walk away with this.’"
The Patriots captain also offered up his opinion as to what a good documentary has, which the Netflix series on Hernandez did not have.
“I think a good documentary, you watch and I feel like usually everyone walks away with something that they have thought from a documentary that’s just filled with information, stuff you didn’t know," he said. "This, to me, was just like, ‘We want you to walk away and think that he was homosexual and he had CTE, and that’s why all of this happened.’ And to me, when I watch a documentary, I want to watch and then manifest and think of stuff on my own. I just felt like it was just directly at that the whole time.”
As players that were drafted the same year and spent three years together in New England, it's completely warranted for McCourty to feel the way he does about the docuseries. Though entertaining, the series has a heavy dose of speculation and combs over a lot of the same material from Hernandez's life that had already been detailed in several books, podcasts, and documentaries. That, coupled with people maliciously reaching out to Odin Lloyd's family makes this Netflix series nothing more than a wooden spoon that stirs the pot of controversy.
If you'd like to check out the full episode of "Double Coverage" in which the McCourty twins talk about the docuseries, you can watch/listen right here:
