PatsPropaganda

An Independent Patriots Blog

Patriots 2019 Preseason Set

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The Patriots got their preseason schedule for the summer and it’s about as Pats-friendly as it could get, with matchups against Matt Patricia’s Lions and Mike Vrabel’s Titans in the first two weeks of the season.

There’s quite a few reasons to be excited about this schedule with the obvious one being that the team can go back to using joint practices in early August. They took last summer off from them and got off to a 1-2 start. Communication with Patricia and Vrabel should be seamless and let’s not forget both teams knocked off the Patriots on the road last year.

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Patriots Need Immediate-Impact 2019 Draft Class

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Things can change pretty quick around Foxboro. Today’s malcontent superstar on another team is tomorrow’s Patriots reclamation project.

That’s why the glaring holes on the Patriots roster might be deceiving. But if we’re going off how things look today on April 9th, there’s more pressure than ever for them to get the most out of their team-leading 12 draft picks and sooner rather than later.

Gronk is gone, along with Trey Flowers. They’re starting over at left tackle for the second year in a row after spending 17 seasons with only two different starters. Julian Edelman, Devin McCourty and Patrick Chung will all be 32 or older for Week 1. Tom Brady will be a decade older than them.

The cupboards aren’t entirely barren, but if they’re going to squeeze a seventh ring out of this thing, it’s once again time to find some to-be legends. If anyone can do it Belichick can, but it’s sure not getting any easier.

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Pats Posits: Digging on Draft

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As I start to really grind on my Top 50 Big Board it slowly becomes an impossible game of need and value while projecting who might be the perfect Patriots picks.

Now, I know the Patriots try to take need out of the equation, but it’s undeniable that there are roster holes to still be filled. And yes, I’m still assuming they can figure things out with Gostkowski who is currently on a USO Tour.

(Though I can’t lie, throwing the former Assumption kicker into the mix is tempting, even if he’d be a severe kickoff downgrade from Gostkowski.)

Updating the Patriots’ biggest needs since I last wrote about them, the tight end spot becomes the biggest priority even more than it already was. As usual the problem is not picking until 32 so it’s impossible to fall in love with many of the perfect elite fits.

At this phase it would make sense for the Patriots to trade up for tight end TJ Hockensen. In theory, it’s a slam dunk, though it’s not like Hockensen alone would be enough. He’s not Gronk 2.0 but he’s the best all-around tight end in the class.

But the Patriots rarely, if ever, make the slam dunk moves outside of drafting Joe Cardona. That leaves us with tons of draft capital and a haze of projection picks.

Let’s try to sift through some of it in the Posits.

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How Will Belichick Rebuild Defensive Coaching Staff?

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Coming on the heels of Rob Gronkowski’s retirement, the abrupt departure of Greg Schiano just six weeks into his tenure as defensive coordinator was a second significant blow to the 2019 Pats process.

With Schiano leaving, speculation is that Belichick will be forced to take a more active role in the defense, something he certainly did early in Matt Patricia’s career.

Brian Flores was DC for just one season, but clearly brought his own unique personality to the defense. Patricia did the same before him, as did Dean Pees and Romeo Crennel before them.

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The Greatest Belichick-Brady Pats Game of All Time Is…

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Pats Pulpit put together the perfect offseason activity, a Pats Madness bracket of the best games of the Patriots’ dynasty. It’s no surprise that the final four games are all Super Bowls.

The earlier rounds were tough, choosing between games like the 2006 playoff win in San Diego and the impossible 2013 comeback against the Broncos wasn’t easy.

The whole exercise made me wonder, what makes the truly perfect win? It was the question I had to conquer before making my decision between the final four and narrowing it all down to my pick for the best game of the Belichick-Brady era.

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The Post-Gronk Pats at Tight End

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After my too-long tribute to Gronk yesterday it’s now time to take stock of the Patriots without Rob Gronkowski. The formerly cap-strapped team now has $17.5 million in space, about as much as they started the offseason with.

There’s room for free agents and there’s definitely room for some draft picks. Let’s take a positional deep dive…who’s on the roster, the free agents available and the draft picks who would fit.

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Goodnight Sweet Gronky

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It’s hard not to sit here and try to write about Rob Gronkowski’s career without a big fat smile on my face. The Patriots selected him just a couple weeks after I focused all my three-years-of-blogging energy into my own site, PatsPropaganda. So Gronk has very much been a main character here for almost nine years.

From that very first glimpse of him, it was clear that Patriots football just got a whole lot more fun. Little did we know we were about to witness perhaps the most spectacular career the NFL has ever seen from a tight end.

Gronk would play just nine seasons, with injuries marring significant games of the 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2016 seasons. But among the rest he put together an easy Hall of Fame career with three Super Bowl rings.

Let’s take a look back at nearly a decade of Gronk spikes.

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