The crappy injury news from Sunday has spilled over into the week as Jeff Howe of the Boston Herald is reporting that Jabaal Sheard has a sprained MCL and will be out 2-4 weeks. That would put his return somewhere around the season opener in Arizona on September 11th, but is there really a need to rush it? Your season isn’t made in Week 1, especially to an NFC opponent.
Now it looks like Chris Long and Trey Flowers could very well be starting against the Cardinals, which I’d kind of enjoy. I’d love to throw a young promising defensive end like Flowers into the fire like that. See what he’s got. However without Sheard I think it makes even more sense to keep Anthony Johnson. You’re going to need every pass rusher you can get and I think Johnson looks more disruptive than Geneo Grissom ever has as an interior rusher.
Granted it was just one game that Johnson flashed. He’ll need to show up this week too, but without Sheard his chances of making the roster seem slightly better.
Afternoon update – Sheard was at practice today, but with the conditioning group, not a full-go. Positive sign regardless. He should probably be ready to go for the opener.
Including the release/cuts of Pascoe, Thompson, Kearse, Bentley, Brown, Biggers, Patriots roster stands at 83.
— Mike Petraglia (@Trags) August 23, 2016
The Pats also released a number of veterans in the last couple days, giving them a chance to land elsewhere. The only one that really interests me is Donald Brown. Brown had a couple practices early in camp and then got hurt and has been MIA since. He got an injury settlement with his release.
So here we are again — LeGarrette Blount, James White and Brandon Bolden are the top running backs just as they were late last season before Blount went down. We can’t forget James Develin is back though and Tyler Gaffney appears to be in line to help out as well. I just can’t help but lament them not taking a running back in the draft.
I never had any hope of Brown contributing this year. Mostly I just hoped Dion Lewis would be back early in the season and could pick up right where he left off. Lewis’ presence alone (assuming he’s back at 2015’s level) alleviates all backfield worries for me. But without him it’s a little scary because the proven guys are mostly one-dimensional and that’s a huge tell for the offense.
“Oh look, James White’s in the game, here comes a screen…”
If Gaffney can be a rotational guy who can both run and catch, Blount stays healthy and White progresses to where they’re no longer terrified to hand the ball off to him, the Pats should be fine for the first half of the season. It’s just annoying to have to keep dealing with depth issues at the same position when it seems like it was a preventable issue that should’ve been better dealt with last offseason.
