Locked On Patriots - Daily Podcast On The New England Patriots - LOCKED ON PATRIOTS - Aug. 16, 2016 - Rob Gronkowski's injury brings tight end group in focus

Episode Date: August 16, 2016

The Boston Herald's Jeff Howe uses Rob Gronkowski's injury at practice as a jumping-off point to break down the Patriots' group of tight ends. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, where are you going, Jim? The elevator's over here. Taking the stairs. But our meeting's up on 8. Yeah, I know. But that's 8 floors up. That's like 8 times... I don't... a lot of stairs. That's the point. I've already lost a few pounds and earned almost $100 in wellness incentives. Whoa, you're getting rewarded for working out? Yeah, I know. I'm just as surprised as you are, Bob.

Fearless is full of surprises. That's the power of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Federal Employee Program. Learn more about our healthy benefits and sign up at fepblue.org slash choose blue by December 11th. What's up, everybody? This is Tuesday, August 16th, and this is Locked On Patriots, your daily Patriots podcast. I am Jeff Howe of the Boston Heralds, and the Patriots are one full joint practice with the Chicago Bears into the week the biggest news that came during Monday's workout of course I'm sure you've heard by now was the injury to Rob Gronkowski now at the timing of this taping I have absolutely no idea what Rob Gronkowski's injury status is we still don't know even what area the body he injured and so with that it's hard to tell you how long

he's going to be out. If he'll be out there Tuesday morning during the second joint practice with the Bears, or if he's going to miss an extended period of time. I don't know. I have absolutely no idea, but I want to use that injury, that episode, which I'll get to in a second, to really break down the tight end position, Because it's been an interesting group of players to watch and study through the first 14 practices of training camp. And Rob Gronkowski's injury really pushes some of those developments to the forefront. Now let's start with Gronk, in case you weren't really able to follow along during Monday's practice, whether it was you were there in person or you followed along

on Twitter or at the Boston Herald or however you get your information. If you weren't able to catch up with this stuff, Tom Brady tried to hit Rob Gronkowski down the right side of the field during the first pass of seven on sevens. The ball was thrown just over Rob Gronkowski's head. He kind of pulled up a little bit and hobbled took about three gimpy steps or hops however you want to put it toward the sideline almost like he pulled something in his leg but he never reached for a muscle in his leg he sort of just slowly walked to the sideline and then back toward the direction of the huddle but never really got back with his team he really just sort of stood there and and watched Tom Brady's final four throws of that seven on seven period before he walked behind Brady and got with the quarterback

for just about a moment until head trainer Jim Whalen walked over at about the same exact time Whalen brought Gronkowski toward the back end of the practice field. They walked slowly together. And again, Gronk never favored any part of his body, so it's hard to sit here and speculate what it was. And I'm not really going to do that, but they walked off the back end of the field. Whalen left Gronk, and then Gronk walked all the way back to the locker room by himself. There was a cart in the area, not for Gronkowski, but it's a good sign, I think, that Gronk didn't need to ride that cart back 150, 200 plus yards just to get to the building, and then about another 150 yards down the tunnel to the locker room.

So that is a long walk for those players when they're injured, and that's why you see a lot of them take the cart and again I think maybe it's a good sign that Gronk didn't need the cart but we truly don't know what Gronk's injury is at this point so without him out there I think that highlights the Patriots strategy of not playing Gronk in the preseason and that sort of looked like a formality at this point anyway I've told you guys since May I think that the Patriots were heavily considering sitting Gronk down for the duration of the preseason and he was the only player who was in uniform Thursday night against the Saints but didn't see the field so clearly that is part of the plan at this point but I think you see an injury whatever it happens to be like this reinforce that notion that you

don't need Gronk out there and yeah he he appeared to tweak something or pull something or who knows he injured something during Monday's workout and those things can happen anytime you're out there working out running around doing whatever at full speed trying to get after a ball that's thrown over your head whether it's a game or whatever but you don't need to run the risk of him suffering a contact injury in those games so again I think that just sort of reinforces the fact that Rob Gronkowski is not going to play a preseason snap and I have yet to find anybody who follows the Patriots who would argue with that type of stance. But like I was saying, I wanted to get to just the tight end position in general because it is an interesting group. Now, Martellus Bennett was the big acquisition this offseason, a trade acquisition from the Bears, of course.

And arguably the biggest guy that they brought in this offseason. Whether it was the draft, free agency, trades, the Patriots were active yet again. And Martellus Bennett has been streaky with Tom Brady, catching passes in bunches, but he's been a little more consistent with Jimmy Garoppolo. You saw their chemistry quite a bit when Garoppolo was looking at Bennett in the preseason opener against the Saints, but it's more than just that. Martellus Bennett has caught 22 passes on Garoppolo throws in team drills through this point in practice. Now 14 practices, that's tied with Aaron Dobson, or excuse me, that's one less than Aaron Dobson has to lead Garoppolo's receivers through this point in training camp.

And those 22 catches, that's just to put a little context to it. James White is next with 19, and then you've got Gronk with 16, Chris Harper with 16, Chris Hogan with 14, DeAndre Carter at 10, and then everybody else is in single digits. So to have 22 catches, that just shows you how popular Bennett is when Garoppolo's looking for a guy to throw to. And then you look at Brady, of course, he's going to play three quarters of the regular season, and Bennett has caught 15 balls off Brady passes. The most to this point is Rob Gronkowski with 21 connections with Tom Brady to put that in further context DeAndre Carter who's having a nice camp has 18 from Brady Aaron Dobson has 17 Brandon Bolden Martellus Bennett each have 15 Chris Harper has 13 James

White has 13 so there's a it's a little more crowded at the top from from Brady's receivers but Garoppolo has leaned on Martellus Bennett quite heavily and that's a good sign because he's he's a tough player to cover he's been a tough player for the Patriots to cover for the Saints last week and he had three catches from Garoppolo during Monday's practice. You know, Jimmy Garoppolo had a good practice against the Bears. Now it was with the second string offensive line and it was mostly against second string Bears defenders. They all essentially, Garoppolo and Brady, due to the numbers, the injuries, what have you, they've been rotating the same skill players. So they're all working with first and second stringers or however you want to label them at this point in camp but garoppolo was the second guy in throughout the day but he played well he

was 13 of 18 in team drills and 9 of 12 and 11 on 11s and those are the ones that you put a lot more stock in because look they're not playing seven on seven football outside of a random media game around here and the 9 of 12 performance in the 11-on-11s was good, it was consistent, and he ended the day with an absolute missile to Devin Lucien on a post route, a short post route in the back of the end zone for a touchdown, one of Garoppolo's most decisive, hardest throws. It was a laser beam at any point this training camp. The other thing I liked about Garoppolo, he had 13 completions,

and they went to 10 different players. So he's spreading the ball around more. He's not relying on guys as much as he did, I think, last week when he was struggling a little more. Bennett had three of those catches, and then DeAndre Carter had two. Nobody else had more than one. So he's spreading it around freely, and I think that's a good sign. He's not going to hit 10 guys over the course of a game

so you put that in context a little bit but he's the fact that he is looking all over the place is really I think it's a good sign I think it's a good point in his development in that sometimes these things happen if there are practices when Garoppolo or Brady's going to throw it 30 to 35 times and you're going to hit 10 players. But when you've only got 13 completions, I think the fact that he went to 10 players is it's noteworthy. Now, I've criticized Garoppolo at points in training camp for throwing too much to Donald Brown or James White, depending on which day of practice it was. So now I just want to circle back and I want to give Garoppolo credit for spreading it around more than he has. So a good day for him.

But let's get back into the tight ends. Without Gronk on the field, Brady struggled throwing the tight ends. He was just 3 of 8 when targeting A.J. Derby and Martellus Bennett over the duration of the remainder of practice. So he had a tough time there. And he didn't connect with Bennett once he connected with Derby three times and he actually got pretty pretty angry at Derby for not being able to come down with a pass over the middle of the field late during the two-minute portion of practice so he saw some fire but it wasn't it also wasn't the it wasn't a good day for for Brady in the offense Brady was

12 of 23 out there in team drills and they were lethargic it wasn't he just wasn't getting guys who were doing a lot for him and I'm sure it's frustrating at this point when Gronk walks off the field and Brady looks to the sideline and sees Julian Edelman out there but being held to the side and not being able to participate in team drills and then looking off to the other field and seeing Danny Amendola still in shorts as he rehabs his injury and Keyshawn Martin down on the other fields doing conditioning runs going on two weeks now so it's Brady's not he doesn't have his starters to really work with neither does Garoppolo of course but again I think there's some frustration when Brady goes through

some streaks of inconsistency or days with some inconsistent production out of his pass catchers and I think he let a little of that fly when AJ Derby couldn't haul in a ball late in practice now Derby is an important name because he was essentially an unknown after he lost pretty much the entirety of his rookie season back in 2015 sixth round draft pick out of Arkansas because he was a convert to the tight end position late in his college career again we just didn't know a lot about him and then he goes down early and we didn't see anything from him spent the entire regular season on injured reserve and then came back this year and and with gronk bennett and then the patriots gave clay harbor a good contract it was just like all right they've got their three right there and then there's a

line but because clay harbor missed the first week and a half of practice, and A.J. Derby got off to a pretty good start, along with Bryce Williams, who has also been injured over the last week or so and lost all the momentum that he created, the undrafted rookie Bryce Williams there. You saw Derby start to separate himself. And I think one of the best battles over the next three weeks could be A.J. Derby versus Clay Harbor.

And I don't know if, maybe they think they can keep A.J. Derby on the practice squad. Now, Derby looked pretty good in the Saints preseason opener, or the preseason opener against the Saints, And eventually teams are going to take notice. And I remember a few years back when the Patriots had a couple good tight ends in Will Yateman and Lee Smith, rookies. Lee Smith was a draft pick out of Marshall. And Yateman was an undrafted guy, former lacrosse player, who kind of surged late in camp. The Patriots thought they were going to get both of those guys snuck onto the practice squad during the final round of roster cuts and they both got snagged up and I believe both by AFC East teams I think Yateman went to the Bills and the Dolphins took Smith if I remember correctly I might have that wrong but either way both of those guys were at Gillette Stadium on that day of roster cuts or the following day the Sunday when the waiver claims

started to come in and they could teams could start building their practice squads and they found out they were being employed now by two new different two new teams so you can't ever assume that you can just cut a guy and somebody else hasn't taken notice especially a tight end in the New England Patriots system there are scouts at every single one of these games they're quite frankly probably scouts at some of these practices where there are thousands and thousands of fans it's pretty easy to blend in and all these teams can look and see Gronk Bennett and then Harbor and notice hey if there's a good tight end down there chances are they're going to hit the waiver system. And should we jump on them? All these teams have to be debating these things.

The Patriots look at other stacked up charts around the league and have the same sort of debates. And I remember after they lost Smith and Yateman that day, Bill Belichick said they never cut a player they're not afraid to lose. But there's no doubt in my mind, Belichick didn't admit it, but there's no doubt in my mind that there are some players that they absolutely don't want to lose but there's no doubt in my mind Belichick didn't admit it but there's no doubt in my mind that there are some players that they absolutely don't want to lose so these are sort of the things that I think teams sometimes hope take care of themselves whether it's due to injury or you know maybe a veteran that they signed not that you want to give money away to a guy who doesn't come in and earn it but you know, maybe that veteran just doesn't play as well as they hoped, and it makes the decision to keep the younger guy a whole lot easier for them.

But again, we're talking, we got three weeks left of good competition before the Patriots have to start making some of these choices. But A.J. Derby's rise has been important. Another thing I mentioned earlier, I believe last week, we're now in week three of the Locked On Patriots podcast, is James Devlin, who the Patriots almost universally refer to as the best fullback in the NFL. Patriots have a very cloudy situation at running back right now

with how many guys they can potentially carry, whether or not they're, or when they're going to activate Deion Lewis from the pup list again the only update I have there is he feels ready to go and we're just he's just waiting to see when Bill Belichick is feels that it's time to put him on the field and Donald Brown has been out for the last couple weeks DJ Foster has never gotten going because of his injury so right now if they have to roll into the regular season brandon bolden because of his special teams contributions and

some capability in the offense james white has looked good in practice had a nice play nice couple plays in the preseason game against the saints lagarrette blunt is really the veteran the guy that you can count on between the tackles. And do you go as far as Tyler Gaffney? Is James Devlin, does he count as a fullback or a running back if you want to include him in that backfield mix? Or do they view him as an H-back or a tight end because he's been working with the tight ends during positional drills? So he's kind of an interesting guy to figure out what the Patriots are going to do with too and this all sort of goes hand in hand as to how many tight ends can you carry can you carry AJ Derby and Clay Harbor if you're also planning on carrying James Devlin

as a running back when there's some overlap especially with I think once they are able to figure out what they want to do with Clay Harbor, use him as an H-back, use Devlin as an H-back. I think that's just a little too much carryover at that point in the roster when you have some tight battles and some guys that you probably don't want to expose to the waiver wire. So a lot of stuff that is really going on here that the Patriots have to sort out in the coming weeks. But we'll assess and monitor this Rob Gronkowski injury as closely as we can. We know any time that he sneezes, if Rob Gronkowski has a cold, it's huge news all around New England.

So you're going to hear all about this stuff. Hopefully, look, for my sake, I'm trying to get this information to you as soon as possible too so hopefully hear about it sooner than later because this is something the patriots really want to have figured out and you know not that it has any real impact in the next few weeks but let's not you know let's not get into the obvious with how how important he is to the patriots offensive system so one thing I want to get to here before I let you go for the day,

if you want to sponsor the Locked on Patriots podcast, you can hit me up at jeff.howe at bostonherald.com. We are listened to by an audience that comprises of 98% men, and they're between the ages of 18 and 44. So if that's your target audience, if that's who you're trying to reach, if that's who you want to hear, if you want them to hear your company's name, hit me up.

You can sponsor Locked On Patriots. We have very, very reasonable rates. And again, jeff.howe at bostonherald.com. Just a couple quick things that also developed on Monday. The fights at training camp, very interesting. Not surprising because the Bears fight with each other pretty much every single day out in Chicago. So not too much of a shock that they brought their fighting ways to New England. Alshon Jeffries started something with Malcolm Butler.

Seemed a little innocent, a little competitive. A couple alpha males just going back and forth. A couple guys working on an island with each other throughout a very, very hot practice. And then, you know, you got another guy coming in, in scrugs, kind of elevates, escalates the situation. The next thing you know, boom. You got a huge circle with probably 40 50 60 players uh split between

each team shoving yelling at each other you know going for some headshots there with their helmets on uh some fun stuff to watch during training camp breaks up the monotony there and then later in the workout he had lamar houston remember he had a very he had a real eventful trip to gillette stadium a few years ago but lamar hou Houston went after a former teammate, Martellus Bennett, who is not the most popular guy in the Bears locker room, it sounds, to get another thing going during the field goal period to wind down practice. So even when you think that these things are starting to simmer down and the workout's just about over, you still got Bears going after Patriots,

and then you got Patriots retaliating a little bit the way Malcolm Butler did. But fun stuff. Butler had to go back to the locker room. That's Bill Belichick's practice policy. It's been in place for a long, long time, years, especially in terms of joint practices. Never forget the Aaron Dobson-Ciams practice with the eagles back in 20 or fight with the eagles back in 2013 when carrie williams just kind of went off on butler and said he was just basically or went off on dobson was just looking to pick a fight and that was the guy

who was in his way at the time so uh jeffrey had to watch the rest of the practice from the sideline wanted to keep playing but john fox went into the huddle and pulled him out and then an assistant coach did the same for lamar houston in that special teams period all those guys are expected back on the field Tuesday so we'll see if any of that bad blood carries over it's good to see a little competition a little fire out of Malcolm Butler who was having a pretty good go of it with Alshon Jeffrey during that practice and then uh some late news on Monday Brock Vereen Patriots safety third third-year safety, a couple days before his 24th birthday, decided to retire.

We don't know why, but the kid was having a good camp. He was going to have a really difficult time making the 53-man roster just because of the depth the Patriots have at the safety position. But he was another practice squad candidate. He could have returned to the practice squad, spent a lot of the last season on the Patriots practice squad candidate he could have returned to the practice squad spent a lot of the last season on the Patriots practice squad and again had two pass breakups and two interceptions at this point training camp was a participant in practice as recently as Sunday missed the Monday workout and then it was announced that he retired so we'll uh hopefully we get some answers there all the best to him as he moves on from football but

we'll see you back at Gillette Stadium on Tuesday for day two of the Patriots three-day joint practice sessions with the Chicago Bears going into the Patriots second preseason game against the Bears on Thursday night at Gillette Stadium it's going to continue to be a fun week it's a hot week i would expect these tempers these competitions to continue to flare up and we'll see how the patriots respond after getting provoked a little bit during monday's workout bill belichick doesn't want to see it but hey you know how these things go sometimes in training camp so it should be another fun day of action down at gill Stadium. We'll see you guys on Wednesday. Bye.