Locked On Patriots - Daily Podcast On The New England Patriots - LOCKED ON PATRIOTS - Sept. 8, 2016 - Rob Gronkowski's hamstring among several noteworthy injuries in Week 1

Episode Date: September 8, 2016

The Boston Herald's Jeff Howe examines the Patriots' first injury report of the season, and there are some key names, both listed and absent. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thanks for coming in, Mr. Mahoney. Do you have your member ID card? Yep, I have it right here in the FEP Blue app. See? Great. Can I... It's awesome. The app can also help me find a provider and keep tabs on my deductibles. Okay. Can I see... Oh, yeah. And my out-of-pocket spending and visit limits. And I can call the nurse line. I'm really glad it does all that, but I only need to see your member ID card. Oh, that's it? Why didn't you say so?

Fearless is just one tap away. With the new FEP Blue app from Blue Cross and Blue Shield, you can access your health benefits on the go. Download it now at fepblue.org slash app. What's up, everybody? This is Locked on Patriots Thursday, September 8th. And we've got a special show for you today because it's the first episode of Locked on Patriots in history. The history of the Internet that has been recorded in front of a live studio audience. We're at the Herald office here at Gillette Stadium.

So I've got one Adam Kirkjian and one Steve Hewitt here to laugh at all of my jokes. So if you guys have a little extra noise going through your head today, don't worry, it's not you, it's me. Today's podcast is brought to you by SeatGeek, and I'll get to those guys later. Good friends at SeatGeek over there. This is all about an injury show, and before I get to the injuries, I do want to apologize, this is a later start than usual, my daughter has done a tremendous job of sleeping over the last two or three weeks, and by sleeping I mean partying, and by tremendous I mean loud, and by late start I mean this has been going on for like three weeks and I'm just,

I'm a little grumpier than usual. So I just needed to get that off my chest. I need, it's a, this is therapeutic for me too. You know, this podcast, it's about you guys, but allow me to be selfish here. All right. Injuries. The Patriots released their first injury report of the season on Wednesday. So a big day for Bill Belichick, his favorite day of the year. It's like Christmas at Gillette Stadium as he puts this report together. And I'm going to give you guys a hot take. I am not sure whether or not you should be scared or nervous or worried about Rob Gronkowski. And by not sure, I mean, I don't know if you should be nervous because I don't know if there's anything to be nervous about. I'm doing a great job of sitting on the fence with this one. But quite frankly, I don't know how bad his hamstring injury is. He tweaked it on the conditioning field recently. And we've seen Rob Gronkowski play through knee injuries.

Came back, of course, a little too early from a broken forearm a few years ago. This isn't like that. This is a hamstring. We don't know how players are dealing with hamstring injuries behind the scenes. Is it a concern that Gronk has dealt with a minor injury in the spring, a bruise earlier in the summer, a hamstring injury now as he's worked to recover from those minor ailments. Yeah, of course it's concerning because Rob Gronkowski's injury history has been filled with the major stuff, the back surgeries, the two broken arms, the knee surgeries, the ankle issue after the Super Bowl in 2011 going into 2012. And this is basically just a complete diversion from what has taken time away from him earlier in his career it's it's minor stuff and rob gronkowski's as tough as anybody in the

patriots locker room if there's anybody who's going to be able to give it a go of course it's him so that's why i'm not sitting here saying oh yeah you know everything's okay or every or the sky is falling you know sometimes uh your proper reaction should be somewhere right in the middle or you temper your expectations. You just want to wait and see because, again, not everything needs to be a hot take on the radio or in print. Sometimes you just want to watch how things play out. Rob Gronkowski wasn't going to play 100% of the snaps Sunday night in Arizona

because that was never the plan. The Patriots weren't going to put him out there in the preseason for any of those four games if he was completely healthy, let alone now with these handful of nagging injuries. So you just need to make sure that Gronk can run around, let's say, 40 to 50% of the time. They got four tight ends they've got four quality receivers we'll get to some of those guys and their injuries shortly but again if you can get Gronk out there running full speed for let's say half to 60 percent of the snaps against the Cardinals that was I don't want to say a best case scenario because if he was healthy you're probably looking at maybe 80 percent of the snaps against the Cardinals conditioning is going to be an issue for him and for pretty

much everybody else because nobody has played a full football game yet at this point that's just the nature of the beast it happens every year with the season opener so again looking at a hamstring issue that he is he's working through he's participating on a limited basis. Do I expect him to play? Yes. Do I know he's going to play? No. But, I mean, again, who out here in New England isn't looking at Rob Gronkowski and the work that he puts in behind the scenes and can honestly say they don't think Gronk is going to play in that season opener. So that's the big Rob Gronkowski take heading into the weekend.

Maybe things will change in the coming days but again that's it's about as level-headed as I could possibly be with that scenario now I mentioned to you guys this podcast is sponsored by SeatGeek and with football back SeatGeek is the smartest easiest way to find tickets for the games you want to see up close and in person this season. There's nothing like being in the stadium for the biggest plays of the year. And with SeatGeek, it's never been easier to get you to the seats that you want for a great value. SeatGeek has the best deals on every ticket in the house, whether you want to sit at the 50-yard line, the club seats, or somewhere in the upper level with the blue-collar fans. Those are the best people to sit with anyway. You know that that you don't want to sit with the rich people i mean come

on now unless you are rich in which case sponsor the podcast i have a ckey cap on my phone and it's by far the easiest way i found to shop for tickets i can be anywhere and with just a few taps i can instantly find seats for the weekend or any game this season. And when I'm talking about this weekend, I'm talking about Jason Aldean and Kid Rock at Fenway Park, which I would probably be going to if I didn't have to fly out to Arizona. Not that that's a burden in my life. I'm looking forward to this trip. Or the Battle of the Bay State at Gillette Stadium with UMass taking on BC

and what should absolutely be a bloodbath that will unfold in the state university's favor. I have the SeatGeek app on my phone. Again, and it's, I've told you guys before, I couldn't operate a potato if you gave me instructions on how to handle such a thing. But I'm still able to figure out the SeatGeek app. So that bodes well for you, for your great-grandparents, for anybody else who is looking to buy a ticket last minute.

With SeatGeek, you can always get the best deal on every ticket because SeatGeek price compares for you by searching multiple ticket sites. Prices can depend on where you shop, but SeatGeek will always find you the lowest available price. And SeatGeek wants to help you get the most bang for your buck. That's why every ticket on SeatGeek is given a grade-based value. You'll immediately see any underpriced seats and be able to find the best deals that fit your budget. Plus, every ticket you buy on SeatGeek is backed by their 100% guarantee, which is important because I got screwed by a ticket website 12 years ago. I won't name what company that was, but SeatGeek isn't going to let that happen to you.

I'm here to protect your money, and so is SeatGeek. Now, best of all, my listeners will get $20 off on their first SeatGeek purchase. So if you haven't worked with SeatGeek before uh I'm here to save you 20 bucks which you can pay forward to me if you want but anyway to get your $20 rebate on tickets download the SeatGeek app which is pretty easy to do again I've done it myself then you go to the settings tab and click add a promo code now enter the promo code that is specific just for my, the promo code is LOPATRIOTS. That's L for locked, O for on, Patriots for Patriots. That's LOPATRIOTS. Now, SeatGeek will send you $20 after you've made your first ticket purchase.

So download the SeatGeek app and enter the promo code LOPATRIOTS today. Back to the injuries. Danny Amendola and Jabal Sheard. You want some good news after talking to Rob Gronkowski for the first several minutes of the podcast? Danny Amendola and Jabal Sheard are not on the injury report. That is more impressive for Sheard than Amendola because, you know, Sheard had a sprained MCL that he dealt with in the Saints game about a month ago. It will be exactly a month before the regular season opener

Sunday against the Cardinals. So Jabal Sheard is going to be out there and that's obviously significant. Trey Flowers, Chris Long, those guys have had a really good summer and you know maybe Barkevious Mingo is going to be able to add something to the pass rush but when you've got Jabal Sheard out there going at full strength you know that's a guy that i think everybody is has pegged as a double digit sack guy going into 2016 contract year uh coming off a season in which he played about 65 of his available snaps might get as much as like 90 of the snaps this year so you're gonna see a guy who was the patriots best run defender on the edge last year uh one of their Patriots best run defender on the edge last year one of

their most efficient pass rushers on the edge last year or really coming from anywhere and having him full strength going out there trying to attack Carson Palmer is going to be huge for the Patriots and it's going to allow them to send wave after wave of pass rushers at the quarterback not just in this game but every game throughout the season. Sheard's not a guy that you want to take off the field because he is so good against the run, but you want him at full strength because, you know, as good as Chris Long has been, he's still 32 and coming off of two injury-plagued seasons. You want to preserve him as much as possible.

Trey Flowers, who has been limited with a shoulder injury that hurt him during his rookie season but flowers is basically starting i mean after a red shirt year had more healthy scratches or more game day deactivations than any player on the team and as a rookie in 2015 you don't want to overburden trey flowers i mean you saw what happened with chandler jones earlier in his career when the patriots tried to play him too much uh he just wasn't ready for it. So again, it's significant to make sure that you have as many guys on the edge running after the quarterback as humanly possible. As for Amendola, after getting activated from the pup list on Saturday,

participating in practice for the first time Sunday, really the first time since before the AFC championship game, he was on the practice field because of knee and ankle surgeries this offseason uh it's surprising that they didn't list one of those or primarily the knee that's been the bigger issue to overcome this offseason uh but not on the on the injury report means he's going to be out there and he's going to play you would think unless his conditioning is just so out of whack but i wouldn't expect that to happen because we've seen him out there running uh for the vast majority of the summer now how much can amandola play i've used this example in the past when you've had rob gronkowski out there as a healthy scratch for the summer and then you see

or i shouldn't say healthy scratch the year coming back from the torn acl and then sitting out the summer he came out against the dolphins and played about played about 50% of the snaps give or take so is that a fair bar to set for Amendola probably if you can get 50% of the snaps on Sunday night out of Amendola I think you're in a pretty good spot if you're Jimmy Garoppolo especially since you look at Julian Edelman who's also not on the injury report which makes sense because again I was told the foot is is pretty good at this point but they have rotated edelman in and out of the lineup throughout the preseason or in his two appearances anyway and again that kind of goes back to the initial thought that nobody is going to be 100

in terms of playing time or at least you're going to have to manage their conditioning levels but edelman has been rotated in and out so he's played a little bit less than let's say a guy like chris hogan who has gotten a lot of action in the the opportunities that he had that he's had to run out there with the first team so again it's just it just And I mentioned Flowers. I don't love the fact that Trey Flowers' shoulder is listed on the injury report. He dealt with shoulder and knee issues as a rookie. It set him back in the summer. It ultimately ended his season early in December. Not that he was getting any playing time before he went to IR anyway.

But you never want to see a situation where a guy that you presumed was completely healthy winding up on the injury report with something that derailed part of his season in the past so that's it's a small concern right now there's there's no reason to look at Flowers and say all right well you know he's got a shoulder injury I'm ready to hit the panic button but we have seen him out there throughout the he's got a shoulder injury i'm ready to hit the panic button but we have seen him out there throughout the preseason with a shoulder harness on so it's something that they've had to manage over the course of the summer anyway shaq mason has practiced so far with a club on his broken right hand this week i've been over this a million times this week

it feels like if you've missed any of those shows uh every show is archived on itunes on audio boom all over my twitter feed you can't you can't miss it if you're anywhere stumbling around on the internet we're everywhere uh but anyway shaq mason we have no idea how he's going to play with a club on his hand because we have no idea how any player is going to play with a club on their hand i don't think it's going to be great to see an offensive lineman be unable to use their hands and the technique necessary to ward off pass rushers but such is life i mean there's they don't have a perfect situation at right guard right now jonathan cooper finally came back to practice on a limited basis about a week and a half ago but we haven't seen him in a preseason

game he missed the entirety of training camp so we haven't seen him in a preseason game he missed the entirety of training camp so we haven't seen him hit anybody has a foot injury not sure how good the foot is but it's on the injury report so he's limited as well and just getting mason out there uh healthy in some capacity is important just from a depth uh chart perspective because if you know who knows what they can get out of cooper who knows what they can get out of Cooper? Who knows what they can get out of Mason? But you might have to dress a couple extra interior offensive linemen just to make sure. You don't want to go into a game already with an emergency plan in place

if your starter at right guard is a guy who you don't know if he's going to be effective with that club. And whether he re-injures the hand, which can happen, even though it's going to be heavily wrapped, or Bill Belichick and Dante Skarnecchia look at Mason and just say, you know what, he's not effective, he's hurting the team. Do you have to go to Cooper if Cooper's ready? Do you have to go to Ted Karras if Karras is your backup there?

And then, I mean, do you have to put yourself in an emergency situation where you have to call up Chris Barker just in case things go awry this weekend? So that'll be a decision I think they're going to have to make before they leave for Arizona. The rest of the, Shea McClellan on the injury report, limited with a shoulder. We had no idea what McClellan's injury had been. He's been at practice in the last handful of weeks. haven't seen him in the preseason since hurting the shoulder

so we're not really sure what to expect out of his role but the important thing there is at least we know what the injury is that's been holding him out for a while nate soldiers on the injury report the hamstring that he tweaked early in that Giants game, I'd be really surprised if he didn't play, so I'm not overly concerned there, although his footwork is something that is his biggest asset when he's playing well. And when he's not playing well, you can tell he's just a little slower with his feet, so if the hamstring's an issue, or if it starts to bother him throughout the course of the game then yeah of course of course that's not an ideal situation when you've got a quarterback

making his first career start and the guy protecting his blind side who also happens to be blocking a motivated chandler jones uh might not be at a hundred percent so that's going to be something to watch at least throughout Sunday night. Even though going into it, I'm not going to sit here and panic. I'm not panicking about anything, clearly. I'm noticing a trend in the things I'm saying here. Apparently I'm just an even-keeled guy. So you've got to like that about me.

Malcolm Mitchell is the last guy I really want to hit on hard here. He's got the dislocated elbow. He's been practicing for a few weeks earlier on a limited basis. Now it seems to be on a fuller scale or a larger scale. He's still got the elbow brace that he's wearing at practice. It seems to be less restrictive than the brace that he was wearing when he first came back. He had a four-week recovery timetable. That four weeks is up today.

So that bodes well unless there's a setback. Maybe that timetable that four weeks is up today so that bodes well unless there's a setback maybe that timetable changed i haven't heard anything in that regard for better or worse so i guess we can expect mitchell to be out there i think the patriots carrying four wide receivers or four true wide receivers on their first 53 is an indication that all four of those guys are going to be able to go out there in some capacity that doesn't mean that Mitchell didn't or wasn't hurt by not being able to fully go out there in games in practices for the better part of those four weeks but at this point I mean you saw a guy who was in good rhythm with Jimmy Garoppolo in that Saints game when guys like Chris Harper and Aaron Dobson and DeAndre Carter couldn't get a lot of separation Martellus Bennett was another

guy who struggled slightly in that Saints game but Malcolm Mitchell came in and really changed the offense because of his explosion his ability to create separation against the Saints corners so hey you know what he's gonna have his hands full if he lines up across from Patrick Peterson or Tyron Matthew. But if he gets the matchup against any of the other Cardinals' cornerbacks, you've got to like that matchup because the rest of the Cardinals' cornerbacks aren't very good. And a guy like Mitchell, with minimal playing experience right now,

I would still take over any Cardinals cornerback not named Peterson or Matthew and then uh Chris Hogan his shoulder is listed on the injury report but he was a full participant we've seen him practice or play over the last month or so since injuring that shoulder early in training camp not an issue nothing i'd be overly concerned with of course you don't like to see uh mitchell and hogan on the injury report when you're already slightly worried about the the participation level that julian edelman and danny amidola have or i guess in their case hasn't had in the last month and then you throw gronk into the mix but again I mean you got to take each injury uh specifically or individually and I don't know if any of them at this point are anything that are overly

concerning you don't like seeing them there you don't want them to have to be dealing with something that would have them less than 100% whether it's because it's nagging or because their conditioning isn't right where it needs to be and then you add to the fact that Jimmy Garoppolo is making his first career start maybe I'm talking myself into panicking I don't really know but again that's the first injury report of the season some interesting takeaways from that injury report I'll hit you guys back on Friday with a lot on Jimmy Garoppolo, how he needs to attack the Cardinals, and what the Patriots defense needs to do in order to help win that game. So

Friday is going to be more of a game plan podcast. Enjoy your Thursday. I'll see you guys later. Is democracy in danger or decline? Condoleezza Rice, William Galston, and Carlos Gutierrez and others take on this question in the fall edition of The Catalyst, a journal of ideas from the Bush Institute. Surveys show Americans place less trust in institutions like the media and business. Others contend America has faced far more challenging periods and emerged strong. Leading policymakers, Bush Institute experts, and respected journalists take on this debate. Read about it at bushcenter.org slash catalyst.