The start of the regular season is always filled with uncertainty and sloppy play, with teams headed for disastrous seasons often looking pretty good, and teams headed for the conference championship losing at home to teams that wouldn’t win another road game all season.
Couple this uncertainty with the amount of injuries that the Pats have had to deal with and it’s obvious that the 2013 Patriots are still very much an unknown.
By winning their first two games, regardless of the lack of style points they got in doing so, the Patriots have set themselves up to overcome their litany of injuries. Now they’ll face NFC opponents in three of the next four weeks, games unlikely to have a major impact on the AFC playoff race down the line.
The Patriots now have a cushion, at least in the division, to continue to force feed their rookie receivers as reinforcements slowly pour in.
The first expected to return is Rob Gronkowski, whose impact in all aspects of offensive football is undeniable.
Re-incorporating the tight end into New England’s offense will provide a huge boost in both the passing and running game. Add in rookie Zach Sudfeld’s return from a hamstring injury that kept him out Week 2, and the Pats should have an entirely new dynamic to their offensive attack.
Danny Amendola will not require surgery for a sports hernia, putting the time table for his return around “a few weeks”. The ideal target return for him? When the Pats return to the division, traveling to the Jets in Week 7. That would give Amendola four more weeks to recover and give the Pats a boost in the Pats’ back-to-back divisional games with them facing the Dolphins the following week.
After an important Week 9 matchup against the Steelers, the Pats get their bye week, the first week running back Shane Vereen would be eligible to return. With that additional bye week to heal, the Pats should be fully healthy heading into the last two months of their season.
Their young wide receivers will have gotten plenty of experience, not only as third and fourth options, but as the primary weapons in the offense. That kind of experience is hard to come by and should pay dividends down the road.
Of course there will be other injuries the Pats must contend with, but no matter how ugly things looked in the first two games, they should be back to near full-strength for the stretch run, and not face a single divisional game as shorthanded as they were for the first two.
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