How Will the New England Patriots Fill the Gronkowski Void?

No applicants need apply. Thanksgiving night was the New England Patriots first game without Rob Gronkowski, and it went surprisingly well. As suspected, New England was ready with plenty of other moving targets for Tom Brady to hit. There was also the impressive run game had by the Patriots; A good decision as the New York Jets’ rush defense is near the bottom of the league. On the other side if the ball, the Patriots secondary (which has been their weakness this season) created game-changing turnovers. Bill Belichick received a lot of criticism for not taking Gronkowski out of the game early in their win against the Indianapolis Colts. Why would anyone even question his decision… or “non-decision” as I like to call it. Gronkowski was injured on a routine play. Why on earth would he randomly pull Gronkowski on a routine play? People have overanalyzed this to death. Belichick defends his decision by saying, “Selective substitutions late in games will never be something he’s too concerned with”. Belichick told WEEI radio, “I don’t think that’s really a good way to approach a team. I’ve never done that. I don’t think that would be a very successful approach to it. You only have so many players. You only dress so many players. Somebody’s got to play. I think you’ve got to be careful when you’re trying to run a team, to go up to one guy and say, ‘Michael, we’re going to leave you in the game because we care about you – but Glenn, we’re going to take you out because you’re really important. You other guys go in there because if something happens to you, we don’t really care.’” And look, the Patriots won without Gronk. I would also like to throw in the other nice surprise Thursday night, the return of Aaron Hernandez. He has been MIA from the Patriots’ lineup for a good month… not that anyone really noticed. At this point, New England most likely has the AFC East title wrapped up. That’s nothing out of the ordinary though. That’s the standard Patriots fans have come to expect. They have, what should be, an easy match-up this Sunday against the Miami Dolphins. I’m much more concerned with the Monday night football game in two weeks versus the Houston Texans. This is the game in which the Patriots’ offense might be missing Gronkowski. However, the Texans have not looked impressive in their last two (very close) games. Their usually top-ranked defense looks to be falling apart. They gave up 37 points to the Jacksonville Jaguars (2-9) and had to play into overtime to beat them. On Thanksgiving, the Texans gave up 31 points to the Detroit Lions (4-7), again needing overtime to win. That actually proved to be a much more exciting match-up than we all thought. But I digress. Maybe the Texans just didn’t feel they needed to put much preparation into those two games against teams with sub-par records. But it certainly exposed weaknesses which the Patriots will surely take advantage of. [contact-form] The post How Will the New England Patriots Fill the Gronkowski Void? appeared first on Boston Sports Nut.