FOXBORO — Like a lot of retirees, former Texas Christian University offensive line coach Eddie Williamson likes to spend much of his free time on the golf course.

But on Sundays in the fall and winter, his wife Patty keeps another pastime going: Watching the Patriots and former Horned Frogs offensive lineman Marcus Cannon.

“That’s the way my wife has it,” Williamson said. “She is an ardent Patriot fan and the only time I’ve ever seen her be quiet was when we had the kids that we had worked with on both teams. And she would just sit there quietly. If it’s the Patriots playing anybody that we haven’t been around, she’s a diehard, diehard Patriots fan. So we watch them any chance we get.”

And this season, Patty and the man who coached Cannon throughout his career in Fort Worth have seen the right tackle make enormous strides. In 15 starts, Cannon has allowed just three sacks, and none since quarterback Tom Brady returned from his four-game Deflategate suspension.

For perspective, Cannon allowed 2.5 sacks alone in last year’s AFC Championship Game loss to the Denver Broncos.

That transformation has been no less important to the offense’s success as any singular aspect, and it has coincided with this season’s return from retirement of Dante Scarnecchia, the longtime Patriots offensive line coach. Scarnecchia, 68, who held that role when the Pats selected Cannon in the fifth round of the 2011 draft. Cannon was projected to go much higher if not for the fact that pre-draft physicals revealed he had non-Hodgkin lymphoma, which kept him off the active roster six-plus months before the cancer went into remission.

While Scarnecchia’s presence deserves a major chunk of the credit for Cannon’s revival this season, other factors have played into it. After all, a coach can’t simply snap his fingers and make a player better. The grunt work takes place on both ends.

Cannon leans toward reticence in general, and didn’t say much on how well he has played this season when asked about it on Wednesday.

“I just do what I can to help the team,” he said. “Just work hard, try to help the team as best I can.”

He’s done plenty of both.

Self-motivated

Williamson knows Cannon well enough to realize the 6-foot-5, 335-pounder can sometimes work against himself, and coaching him may require a different tack.

“It hurt him when he didn’t play well,” Williamson said. “Honestly, at times, there’s a time you get after him pretty good, but there’s also a time you have to pull and tug on him and hug him up a little bit to bring him through that. He is his own worst critic.”

That mental aspect can make one mistake compound itself and create another. At times, it appeared that may have been the case with Cannon in Foxboro. Williamson likens the phenomenon to his own golf game.

“Sometimes you get so disgruntled with yourself in the effort to work through something you maybe make the matter even worse,” he said. “I play golf. I’m not a very good player, but I know that when I have my worst days, I go back to try and fix it, sometimes I get in a bigger mess than I was the day before.”

That desire to go back and fix it, whatever the problem may be, has never been an issue with Cannon, according to Williamson. There always has been a touch of perfectionism, a need to get it right if it didn’t quite feel that way yet.

“Marcus was the kind of young man if he felt like he wasn’t playing to his potential, at least at that time, he would say, ‘Coach, can you stay with me? I’m not getting this done. Help me,’ ” Williamson said. “And we’d stay after practice for a few minutes and work on it. He would get to practice early and do some things just on his own to work to improve on things that he was struggling with.”

A new strong suit

Scarnecchia’s ability to coax the best out of Cannon obviously has helped — a point underscored Friday when he was named a second-team All-Pro. But, according to Williamson, Cannon also holds new strength and conditioning coach Moses Cabrera and team dietician Ted Harper in high regard.

“He’s a big, strong man, but his feet are unbelievable for a person his size,” Williamson said. “There’s an old saying that some offensive linemen are slugs. They’re big people. They can’t move. But Marcus is like a dancing bear. I think he’s lost a little bit of weight, or he looks trimmer to me on TV. He’s kind of alluded to the fact that he’s been careful in his diet.”

Although this is just his sixth season, it’s not a stretch to call Cannon one of the leaders on a starting line that contains a rookie and two second-year players on it. But Cannon points to a collaborative effort.

“It’s more of a just lead by example and that’s how everybody on the line does,” he said. “There’s not one fearless leader. We all work together really good. We’re all pretty much the leaders on the offensive line, all of us, everybody. We all take a part. If we see something, try to get it fixed. It’s just a big group effort.”

But when it comes to Scarnecchia’s leadership and effect on the line Cannon, in his own succinct way, certainly doesn’t downplay the coach’s impact.

“It’s awesome,” he said. “Yeah, it’s awesome.”

With the way Cannon’s played this season, you can bet Patty Williamson feels the same way.