Gillislee happy to get second chance with Patriots

Signed as a restricted free agent from Buffalo, running back Mike Gillislee is hoping to give the team more than he did a year ago when he was a weekly inactive for much of the season.

FOXBORO – Mike Gillislee says he’s happy to be getting another opportunity in New England.

Whether he can take that opportunity and run with it, well, that remains to be seen.

“Last year .. it’s in the past,” the veteran running back said at the conclusion of the Patriots’ recent three-day mini-camp. “It’s something that I don’t think about. I’m given another opportunity and that’s what I want to focus on.”

Signed by the Patriots as a restricted free agent from Buffalo (the signing cost them a fifth-round draft pick in return), Gillislee arrived last spring after having led the NFL in rushing by averaging 5.6 yards per carry for the Bills in 2016.

Gillislee broke in with the Patriots by scoring three touchdowns while playing the lead back role in their 42-27 season-opening loss to Kansas City, but even then he averaged just 3.0 yards per carry in that game (45 yards on 15 attempts) and he never got untracked.

From November on, he became an afterthought, listed as inactive for seven of the Patriots’ last eight regular-season games and the entire postseason.

His totals at season’s end: 104 carries for 383 yards, a 3.7-yard average, with five TDs; one reception for 15 yards.

According to Gillislee, the entire experience served as a lesson for him.

“You’ve just got to stay focused, you know,” he said. “But at the same time, you’ve got to know that you’re blessed because there’s a lot of people that want to be in my situation so I just look at it that you’ve just got to stay focused.”

As Gillislee watched last year, Dion Lewis took the lead back role and literally ran with it. Gillislee, meanwhile, essentially fell off the depth chart, plummeting to the point where he not only was behind Lewis, but Rex Burkhead, James White and even Brandon Bolden as well.

One year later, Burkhead, White and Bolden are back, but Lewis is gone, having left the Patriots to sign with Tennessee as an unrestricted free agent. Now, though, the competition in a crowded backfield also includes Sony Michel, one of the team’s two first-round draft picks this year, and Jeremy Hill, who ran for 1,124 yards as a rookie with the Cincinnati Bengals four seasons ago.

To put it bluntly, it wouldn’t be an overstatement to say that approaching his 28th birthday (in November), Gillislee is running for his football life in New England.

Originally drafted by Miami out of the University of Florida in the fifth round of the 2013 draft, Gillislee’s NFL experience has been a tour of the AFC East, one that’s taken him from the Dolphins (2013-2014) to the Bills (who signed him following his release from the Arizona Cardinals’ practice squad in 2015) to the Patriots.

Yes, Gillislee lasted two seasons each in his stints with Miami and Buffalo. Now, he prepares for his second season in New England.

“I’m still on the team,” he said, “and just working hard each and every day trying to get better.”