Happy trails, Gronk. We hate to see you go, we really do. Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski announced he was hanging up the cleats yesterday, putting a bow on a 9-year career that featured three Super Bowl championships, four All-Pro nominations and five Pro Bowl designations.
And one missed tackle on prevent defense at Hard Rock Stadium. Can’t forget that one.
The loss the Patriots are incurring here with Gronkowski’s retirement can’t be understated. The Patriots have gone a combined 35-8 against the rest of the AFC East when Gronkowski is on the field (10-3 vs. Miami, 0-1 in their last one).
No, this is hardly the first time the Patriots have incurred losses in personnel and so long as Bill Belichick and Tom Brady are still in the building, it’s safe to consider them a lock for 10+ wins and likely an AFC East championship.
But the tide is definitely turning. The Bills and Jets are both loading up for runs at the division title in 2019. The law of averages states that one of these two will get their push for the postseason to stick, while the other bottoms out and has to start over. Could they both get it right? Sure. But it’s not probable, just based on averages.
Regardless, the presence of each team being aggressive does put some pressure on the Patriots. Miami, for their part, will likely end up lingering in the background this season, but have the chance to play spoiler for one (or two…or three) of these teams, much like how the Bills played spoiler to so many of Joe Philbin’s Dolphins.
More specifically to Miami, the retirement of Gronk eases the issue of covering the most dominant tight end in the history of the game. Miami hasn’t been able to cover tight ends effectively for quite a while now, so one less mis-match nightmare will make life easier whenever the time comes for Miami’s next playoff surge.
