The strange turns of the 2017 spilled over into the offseason once again yesterday with Tom E. Curran writing that Rob Gronkowski was in fact unhappy with football this season dating all the way back to training camp. In retrospect this article from Ryan Hannable is even more interesting.
There were rumors of Gronk wanting to retire, to maybe give WWE a try instead, just after the Super Bowl but I mostly dismissed those as just being end-of-disappointing-year grumblings. But when taken as part of the big picture of the Pats 2017 season and it’s hard not to think things were different behind the scenes this year, no matter how much you do or don’t want to buy into the old Seth Wickersham piece, the rumors about Brady, Guerrero, Kraft, Belichick, Malcolm Butler and now even Curran’s piece about Gronk.
For the most part, fans want to dismiss these things because distrusting the media is all the rage these days, but there’s so much smoke from a variety of places that it feels like something most definitely was off with this team. Here we are, 17 years in, and the closest kind of contemptuous season to 2017 came in 2009.
Belichick couldn’t get that team to play the way he needed. There was a weird mix in the locker room, climaxing with Adalius Thomas among others being sent home after they were late due to a heavy snowfall. Something just felt off about the 2009 team as they welcomed Brady back from his injury year, while the defense was in full turnover mode from the dynasty days.
Maybe it shouldn’t be a surprise that the 2017 defense was shredded on their way out just like the 2009 team was. We dismissed the early poor performance as an annual occurrence, as a Super Bowl hangover, but many of the flaws and problems we saw in September were the same flaws and problems that got them beat in the Super Bowl.
The turnover wasn’t quite so extreme this season, but the attrition of recent years seemed to be an underlying factor. Losing Rob Ninkovich, Chris Long and Jabaal Sheard was bad enough, then to lose Dont’a Hightower on top of it and the front seven felt a lifetime away from what they were for the last few seasons. Kyle Van Noy emerged on the field, but was happy to confront reporters off the field. Again, the sum of it all just felt different.
A bad game here or there and it’s easy to forgive them. Heck, despite all of this they were still a play away from winning the Super Bowl, but even that can’t cover up that this Patriots team seems like they need a figurative reset this offseason. Things started bad and ended bad for them and that makes it far easier to focus on the bad, rather than the impressive moments and wins this team still had despite their issues.
What if Hightower and Edelman hadn’t gotten hurt? Why was Butler benched? Will Gronk retire? Are Belichick and Brady headed toward a breakup? Should the Pats have gotten more for Jimmy Garoppolo? Is Guerrero Yoko? Did Robert Kraft order the code red?
So many questions with deep-impacting implications for the future of the franchise. Can they settle it all down this offseason and find a new championship core? That’s the only answer we’ll actually get.
Mike – don’t go all “EEI” on us now, your site is the place to go to for real Pats news – not the drama that plays out on Boston airwaves regularly.
Sherlock Holmes said that once the impossible has been eliminated, what remains, however improbable, is the truth. BB sabotaged his own defense in the SB. He gave Brady such a look of hatred in the 4th quarter that TB stopped his famous let’s go cheerleading and looked sick.
This happened, not speculation. The why may never be admitted by the principals, but it’s not pretty.
More probable than not: TB12, BB, Gronk are back. Amendola signs, Edelmen and Hightower return. If any of those things don’t happen I’d be surprised but Amendola maybe goes for a payday and 1% Gronk retires. Then it’s about LT which we hope Solder goes for 1-2 more years, RB (best case draft and Lewis and Burkhead but probably 2/3 of that) hit LB, EDGE, Safety with those draft picks. Hope to get a Mo Wilkerson, cheap reclamation or wants a title guys. The ingredients a certainly there for a run at 6. Really came down to talent on D got exposed. If they made one more play what would we be talking about? Everything would look different because winning cures everything.