New England Patriots on Paper - updating the "Summer of Gronk" debacle

It seems that we are about to get some closure on the nightmare-ish sequel to the Summer of Gronk...

...an offseason that has seen Patriots' tight End Rob Gronkowski vilified by journalist and fan alike for his seeming disregard for his own health - and there is something to it, as Gronkowski's antics have reminded old-school types of the old NFL, where the players worked hard and partied harder.

Gronkowski is a throwback, though it is his apparent naivete to blame for his cavalier behavior rather than any sort drunken irresponsibility or ill will.  His want and desire is to play football and, when healthy, he is the prototype - the standard by which all NFL Tight Ends are compared.

Regardless, he has become a whipping boy for the media and some portend to link the news of his impending back surgery to said disregard for his own health, when in reality it is just some minor preventative maintenance that popped up in the media when the Patriots decided to seize the opportunity to cut a potential problem off at the pass.

It's widely known as the "And While We're At It" syndrome, a common thread among divorce lawyers, football coaches and, apparently, top-shelf orthopedic spine surgeons...

...Dr. Robert Watkins has been commissioned to perform the surgery, which will occur sometime in mid-June at the very nice sounding Marina Del Rey Hospital in Los Angeles - a time frame that will theoretically place the recovery both from his recent forearm surgery and the impending back procedure at similar points in mid-August, which probably has Gronkowski starting the season on the Physically Unable to Perform (PUP) list.

The author of many papers and a couple of books on the subject of spine surgery, Dr. Watkins is a "renowned expert in orthopaedic injuries to the back and neck.", according to his profile on the website for Watkins Spine - for which he is the namesake - and is known for what he terms as "minimally invasive" surgery, for which it is described as the performance of spine surgery through an approach that causes as little destruction to surrounding tissues as possible...

...which is all medical gobbledygook for getting "scoped", doing a little housekeeping in Gronk's spine...

Smack in the middle of the pre-season schedule is no time to be coming off the skids and conditioning will be a real issue, so a common theme among the experts is a debate over whether the Patriots try to integrate Gronkowski into action as soon as possible, or give him a PUP list designation to ensure that he's 100% and is in football shape.

If designated to the PUP, Gronkowski would have the first six weeks of the season to get in shape before he is eligible to return to the active roster and would appear the more prudent choice.

But why the delay?  If they knew he needed the procedure, why wait until now?

Simply, he could have done without the surgery at this point and they probably wouldn't be doing the back procedure at all if the multiple forearm surgeries hadn't set him back - but since they did, and the timing seemed about right, the decision was made.

" 'we're killing two birds with one stone' by getting the back surgery when he's out and recovering with his arm, because he really can't do much right now anyway." said his agent Drew Rosenhaus on a radio interview Thursday morning.

According to league sources, the purpose for waiting on back surgery for the two-time All Pro was to ensure that the infection that had plagued Gronkowski in his broken forearm had been eradicated, thereby providing a solid recovery timetable - and when that timetable had been established with some certainty, the stars aligned and a go-ahead was issued.

"This is a lingering problem that Rob's been playing with, actually through all of last season" Rosenhaus explained, "And now that he's out with the arm for a set period of time, it's something that he eventually would have to do, and the recovery will be very comparable to the amount of time he would have missed with the arm surgery, so why not get it done now and make sure when he is healthy he's 100 percent and he doesn't have to address the back down the road."

Indeed!  Let's cut into Gronk's spine!

The Patriots' seized the opportunity to have a procedure done to reduce the odds for having to deal with it in the future, since he was going to be on the mend anyway.  But what does all of this mean -for not just Gronkowski, but for the very offensive philosophy of the Patriots?

Tomorrow: Part 2 - Juggernaut derailed, or just rescheduled?

Summer of Gronk, the sequel: When you wish upon a star...

...makes no difference who you are - unless, of course, you are Rob Gronkowski, and every mother hen from Connecticut to Maine wants to lock you in a bird cage, where you shall remain until Stromboli - um - I mean Bill Belichick needs you to perform.

They mean well, these doting old-world types, and all they really want is to help you to steer clear of the trappings of fame and fortune, but where the problems start is when you realize that it's not a gaggle of chicken soup toting blue hairs, but pear-shaped, balding fanatics that need you to stay healthy for their fantasy league...

...or random tabloid journalists who are acting as some sort of a wrong-minded, impromptu Jiminy Cricket, a very public collective conscience that seems to go out of it's way to suggest that the infection in Gronkowski's arm was somehow related to him not being "all in" on his recovery from a broken forearm.

Regardless of which it actually is, the summer of the man widely considered to be the best tight end in the league when healthy has been reduced to a nightmare of scalpels and bad publicity - the former can't be helped due to his broken forearm, but the latter is a creation of beat writers who need something to consume their time before training camp...and Gronkowski seems to be their target.

And now, a tale of a potential back issue that reportedly may require surgery - which is random speculation at this point, but it seems a trifle odd that Gronkowski's back issue has arisen in the media just recently, the thing timed with Gronkowski's 4th arm surgery and perhaps meant as a distraction from the fact that the Boston Globe started the Gronkowski hate-fest and the prognosis is far better than their doomsday style blather predicted.

and it's just a little hard to believe that a back issue that plagued the team doctors and trainers all last season was bad enough to require surgery and it wasn't addressed until now?

Perhaps it stems from the infection in Gronkowski's arm, the reason why it hasn't been addressed before now, but still, something ain't stirring the kool aid.

The Patriots don't work that way.  Have you ever seen a Bill Belichick injury report?  Typically there are about two dozen players with assorted maladies, but nary a mention of Gronkowski's back...

...which wasn't the case coming out of college, when it was widely speculated that Gronkowski suffered from Spinal Stenosis - a condition which causes the narrowing of the canal that encases the spinal cord, a condition that could cause paralysis upon the impact of a routine hit or even a twist when making a cut running a route - but that turned out to not be the case, as no NFL team would have touched him in the draft had the rumor been true.

Those concerns came up once again when it was revealed that the 2011 All Pro had undergone an MRI on his back to address what is being termed as "chronic back pain" and will speak with a noted spine specialist sometime in the next few days...

...but perhaps he should speak with a noted wood carver who could make his body strong and a Blue Fairy that could grant wishes, that way the only procedure he'd have to go through is if he tells too many lies and has to have a few inches shaved off his nose so it will fit in his helmet.

Gronkowski hasn't lied about anything, not even responding to the media generated hate-fest that has the public stirred into a froth other than his bright, neon "Sorry for partying" tank top that he sported at Universal Studios - but Gronk doesn't have to be apologetic about anything, because being a real boy comes with it's bumps and bruises...

The State of Patriots' Nation, Part 2: The return of Brady's favorite receiver

"Journalism is a low trade and habit worse than heroin.”

The sagacious Dr. Thompson knew the heart of journalism, often quoted as calling sportswriters misfits and clowns and fools - the hired help. He was an Oakland Raiders' fan, a friend of John Madden. Al Davis didn't trust him but Richard Nixon did, and together they would spend hours talking professional football.

Amendola's injury history is a concern with fans and the media

It was the middle of 70's, a time when a "Balanced" offense was a 65/35 split between running and passing, but players like Cliff Branch and Fred Blitnikoff and Dave Casper piqued his interest. He saw these players and the Raiders as a whole as the trend setters of the time and saw the growing importance of the passing game - and the defending of such.

He was avid, such a fan of the concept and fundamentals of football that he was said to write his best pieces in complete despair of football season ending each February. He learned from Madden and from Davis and even from Nixon - his writing capturing not the score nor the stats nor the money, but the essence...

...which makes me wonder what he'd have written when Wes Welker decided to cut his losses and sign with the Denver Broncos in March. Probably, he would have seen it as inevitable - the result of free agency mixed with bad advice from money hungry agents.

For sure, the reaction from Patriots' Nation was immediate and terse, but not everyone felt the same and the issue plunged the nation into a fervid "he said/she said" debate that was fueled by media speculation.

It got so bad that the normally reserved team owner Robert Kraft addressed the "Welker issue" at a candid impromptu breakfast presser in which he chided the press for blowing things out of proportion and Welker's agent for lying about how things really went down.

Well, yeah. Isn't that what the press and sports agents do?

Kraft and coach Bill Belichick have little tolerance for either, and since the Patriots losing Welker to the Broncos was all the journalists seemed to want to talk about, Kraft thought he'd give them their money's worth, then turned the floor over to Belichick, which was like throwing meat to a wolf.

Bottom line is that the Patriots do things the way they do them. They manage the roster, draft and coach the way they see fit, and it's worked out pretty well for the most part - but after last season's patch job in the receiving corps got them to the AFC Championship game for the second year in a row, many fans and media members were wondering openly why Belichick would let Welker fly.

And the answer is simply because it didn't work.

In the biggest of situations, where the light shined the brightest and the stage and the moment were larger than life itself, it just didn't work.

This is an intangible, something that can't be measured within the mathematical framework of statistics. Belichick had spent his entire tenure since attrition and Brady's torn knee-guts robbed the team of it's identity - and he has retooled every position on the field except receiver...and it was time to try it again.

In 2007, Belichick's attempt to retool the receivers brought in Randy Moss to give the Patriots a big time vertical threat. That worked like a charm until the lights got bright, then it failed. Of course, the move to bring in Moss and Brady's reliance on him were only part of the reason why 19-0 turned into 18-1, but it was a lesson learned for Belichick.

The same season he also brought in Welker and the diminutive slot master quickly replaced "The open receiver" as Brady's favorite target. That also worked well until the moment was biggest - and in subsequent years the trophy slipped through the connection and wobbled to a stop on the turf.

Three AFC Title games and two Super Bowls and still no trophy. In fact, two epic failures on the part of the Brady/Welker connection had much to do with those Lombardi trophies ending up elsewhere...

So just as Moss got run out of town, so did Welker - but under the guise of bad timing coupled with bad advice, all the while with former St. Louis Rams' receiver Danny Amendola hunkered down at an undisclosed location in Boston, waiting for the Welker thing to unfold before he and the team made their move.

A lot of the renewed vigor surrounding the hate is due to the turnover at the receiver position, as last year's dynamic duo of Wes Welker and Brandon Lloyd are now either unemployed or may as well be, and many are concerned that the production from those spots will decline with the influx of new players...

...and who's to say, really? If the yardage and number of catches and yards after the catch indeed decline, yet Kraft is up on the podium with a death grip on the team's 4th Lombardi with a team built for two or three more, what do stats matter?

This is where most of the experts climb aboard the Bandwagon of Hate, where they see that the almighty Welker is gone, yet they are blind to the fact that the team still has Tom Brady, and the only thing that has changed is Welker's mailing address. Brady will find the open receiver, and his options may be among the most plentiful in the NFL, when including the athletic and monstrous tight ends.

And despite attempts by reasonable people to stem the tide of comparing Danny Amendola to Welker, the comparisons persist - the most common of which is between their injury history but that, too, is a fraud...

...the stupid and wrong health questions hanging around Amendola's neck like an albatross due to the media fabrication. True, Welker is durable, about that there is no doubt. Dude takes vicious hits and pops right back up. Crazy. There will never be another Wes Welker. But while it is true that Amendola has missed significant time the past couple of years, it is also true that he hasn't been any more dinged up than Welker, just a victim of bad timing in that regard.

Both have suffered season ending injuries, Welker tore his ACL and MCL in the final game of the 2009 season, missing the teams' loss to the Baltimore Ravens in the divisional round. He had also missed two games earlier in the year with a knee injury - while Amendola suffered a dislocated elbow at the start of the 2010 season, and missed 15 games. Last season, he suffered a dislocated clavicle, for which he missed just three games despite coming very close to the bone severing his aorta.

If my math is correct, that adds up to nearly an even draw, though Amendola's injury history is more recent, which tends to bring more stigma to them.

Weak argument...next?

With Amendola being a lock to make the roster, there remains three - perhaps four - spots up for grabs, with any one of the contenders capable of helping Patriots' fans forget all about Brandon Lloyd. Draft Pick Aaron Dobson is a large quick target with incredible hands and body control. Josh Boyce is a speedster that could become a change of pace guy and someone who could stretch the field, particularly in a 23 personnel alignment.

"Molasses" Mike Jenkins will compete for backup snaps behind Dobson, as will former Buffalo Bills wide out Donald Jones. Julien Edelman will be in a fight to secure a roster spot behind Amendola. There are a couple of more players in the mix for backup snaps, T.J. Moe comes to mind, but the fact is that there are capable young options to choose from, where last season there was - um - Deion Branch and Dante Stallworth...

...sure doesn't sound like a downgraded roster to me, and when you stop to consider that these wide receivers are not even going to be Brady's primary targets, you should begin to see that anyone who tells you that the Patriots are in dire straits with their receivers just don't know what they're talking about...

...Just like a junkie.

State of the Patriots' Nation, Part 1: Addressing the Hate

When the New England Patriots' Bandwagon of Hate leaves the station in early September it's gonna be full - as always. They've even added a press car.

But this year, with all of the questions and injury concerns, attrition and a draft that confused many, scores of journalists and gleeful football enthusiasts who believe that the Patriots time as rulers of the AFC East and subsequent contenders for a title has truly come to an end are jumping on that bandwagon...

...and that's ok. Sports journalists realize that their shelf life is only secure as long as they stay in the median, venturing out into traffic only to spew their bile of negativity to conform to - and at times to become the talisman for - public opinion.

So when Tom Brady gets old and the Patriots experience some turnover and their draft produces depth instead of instant starters, it's common for the press to merge into mainstream traffic and start trashing the Pats.

But an interesting thing happens when you start to doubt Bill Belichick. Anxiety creeps up on you, realizing even as you speak or write for public record that there is every chance that Belichick is going to pull another rabbit out of his hoodie and make you look like a fool...

...in which case your smooth merge into mainstream traffic turns into a nightmare of swerving into oncoming traffic and getting squashed like a roach by the Belichick steamroller. And the people who believed your swill from the start will start to doubt you - that is, until you explain that football prognostication is not an exact science and, besides, you're dealing with the most volatile soul in all of sports.

And then people will believe you again, because Belichick is secretive and a known non-conformist who befriends jaded, washed up rock stars and whose idea of letting his hair down is sitting on his boat with his girlfriend and posting random cryptic tweets while the cabin boy gently handles the gin and meticulously stuffs imported greek olives with fresh-roasted pimentos.

Ah, madness. Where have you been hiding? I have so missed your quality delusions - but now that we are approaching the start of Organized Team Activities, it is time to shake the cobwebs and take an objective, realistic view at how the Patriots look in relation to the curve, using the negativity of the hired help as a base from which to proceed...

...because all they can be sure of is that there will be 11 guys on defense, 11 guys on offense with AARP members Tom Brady and Bill Belichick running the show when the opening whistle blows - other than that, there are no guarantees. And that kind of ambiguity scares folks who rely on things staying the same, never changing, never evolving....

And it's not like things will be changing that much anyway, despite the turnover at the receiver positions, because that's all that's really changed. Besides Brandon Lloyd and Wes Welker, every single starter in the AFC Title game is back, and while many in both the media and around the water cooler point to Welker's defection as the death nail for the Patriots' coffin, the simple fact of the matter is that the worst that will happen is that Brady will have to go back to his mantra of his favorite receiver being "The Open Receiver", instead of being locked in on Welker...

...and that subject alone deserves it's own headline, which it will get as part of this nine part examination of the New England Patriots and their detractors in this 2013 offseason, the series entitled "Addressing the Hate", where fact will battle fiction, stats will be thrown out the window and we go mano-a-mano with the haters.

And we'll begin on Thursday by tackling the receivers, so to speak, provided we can catch the speedy little buggers...

Patriots sign Hawkins, now have 12 receivers under contract

The New England Patriots on Thursday announced the signing of former Tennessee Titans wide receiver Lavell Hawkins to a two year deal.

The fifth year receiver was used sparingly in Tennessee's offense and projects as a slot receiver for the Patriots provided he makes it out of camp with a roster spot, which could be directly tied to his special teams contribution, as Hawkins is a bit of a punt return threat.

Hawkins is 5' 11" and around 195 pounds, and was known primarily for his speed coming out of Cal, and ended up being the Titans' 4th round pick of the Titans in 2008. 

Hawkins' signing brings the number of receivers on the 90 man offseason roster to an even dozen - of which they will keep perhaps five, and with new addition Danny Amendola a lock to make the roster along with special teams ace Matthew Slater, that leaves essentially three roster spots open for ten guys to fight for. 

The Patriots drafted Marshall's Aaron Dobson and TCU's Josh Boyce and brought in free agents Michael Jenkins and Donald Jones, and also signed some undrafted free agent receivers, T.J. Moe being one...

...point being, this camp competition is going to be fun to watch, and no matter who makes the roster, with the talent competing, the Patriots win.

Edelman hobbled again, OTA participation in question

Julian Edelman's off season of horrors just took another turn towards ambiguity.

The Boston Globe reports that the fifth year wide receiver out of Kent State has been seen wearing a walking boot, and that his status for upcoming Organized Team Activities is in question.

Edelman reportedly broke a bone in his right foot in the Patriots' December 2nd game against the Miami Dolphins and was subsequently placed on the season-ending IR a few days later.  The report of this setback brings more clarity to the reason why Edelman received virtually no interest in free agency this offseason.

Edelman signed a one year deal to return to the Patriots in early April.

OTA's are scheduled to begin on May 20th and running through June 7th, then mandatory mini camp begins four days later - and Edelman's status is up in the air for both.  The report states that he should be fine for the season, though the paper did not state how that status was determined.

Edelman is expected to compete for a backup role in what promises to be an entertaining training camp, with Edelman being the only returning pure receiver from last season.

State of the Patriots' Nation: Projected 53 man Roster

The draft is done and training camp is two and a half months off...and that sucks.

On the flip side, it gives all of us twice the time that Jesus had in the wild alone with his thoughts, and the damnable game of football taunting us and tempting us on top of it. But we have things that Jesus didn't.

Logan Ryan has a great opportunity ahead of him at corner

Food, for one, and we have the Red Sox to distract our attention from the long NFL off-season. Hell we even have the Celtics and Bruins playoff runs to occupy our time, so if Jesus can pull of 40 days in the woods fighting off temptation, surely we can endure twice that long fighting off boredom.

But for those obsessive / compulsive few of us that stem on the game of football, these "Dog days" of spring taunts us and tempt us. We pretend to care what the other Boston teams are doing but, out of sheer due diligence, we can name the starting lineups for all teams in addition to save and power play percentages for the hockey perverts and ERA's and batting averages for the Boys of Summer.

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