Rob Gronkowski Would Love For You To Try To Stop Him And Other Leftover Patriots Thoughts
BOSTON (CBS) -- The New England Patriots headed into Lucas Oil Stadium for a prime-time matchup on national TV, but through the first 30 minutes of football, they really weren't getting much from their quarterback, a man who is a future Hall of Famer and will undoubtedly go down as one of the very best to ever play the single most important position in team sports.
No matter, though -- the Patriots just turned to a third-year, undrafted running back with three career games of experience who had touched a football just 32 times in his NFL career.
Just like they drew it up, right?
Of course, things worked out swimmingly for the Patriots, as Jonas Gray ran buck wild on the Colts, rushing for 199 yards and four touchdowns on 38 carries. He entered the night with 32 career carries, 133 career yards and zero career touchdowns. It was absolutely amazing, and nobody -- especially the Indianapolis Colts -- saw it coming. It was just the latest reminder that sports are insane and unpredictable, and that is why we keep on watching.
For as great as Gray was, he wasn't the only story, so let's dive headfirst into the leftover thoughts from the Patriots' 42-20 win over the Colts.
--Rob Gronkowski is not a human being. We've covered this before. But in a career filled with evidence that he is not the same species as the rest of us, Sunday night may have been the most convincing case yet.
It's not that Gronkowski's numbers -- four catches, 71 yards, one touchdown -- stand out. In fact, a quick glance at the stat sheet might make you think Gronkowski had a distinctly non-Gronk night. Yet watching the game, it was perhaps the most physically dominant game of Gronkowski's career.
For one, he was throwing some heavy-duty blocks to help spring Gray on some of those long runs, but it was when he had the ball in his hands that he showed off his unrivaled beastliness.
Seemingly bored of using the old-fashioned stiff-arm, Gronkowski adopted the "Hug A Neighbor" move when trying to shed a would-be tackler.
He also had the "Just Completely Get Off Me" move:
In the third quarter, Gronkowski tried to spike Sergio Brown as if the defensive back was just a football.
Of course, he later completely removed Brown from the playing surface, and all of this physical dominance made that ridiculous 26-yard catch-and-run-through-a-sea-of-blue-bodies touchdown not surprising in the least. Good luck to any defensive back tasked with trying to stop him in the months to come. Clearly, Mr. Gronkowski looks forward to it.
--Of that personal foul penalty that he earned by blocking Sergio Brown all the way to the locker room, Gronkowski said this on NBCSN after the game: "Yes, he was just yapping at me the whole time. That's why I took him and threw him out of the club. ... I was the bouncer, picked him up and tossed him out of the club on that one touchdown. So that was perfect."
That's a hilarious quote on its own, but where things really get crazy is here: When Gronkowski removed Sergio Brown's soul from his body, Cris Collinsworth said this on the national broadcast: "Gronk over there stirring it up like it's a nightclub."
You'd never guess it by their outward appearance, but it seems as though Gronk and Collinsworth share a similar mind-set about partying at nightclubs.
--Know what's funny? Jonas Gray rushed for four touchdowns in this game, and the Patriots as a team had just three rushing touchdowns all season long. In fact, Gray has 330 rushing yards, just 10 fewer than Stevan Ridley -- and on 24 fewer carries. Gray (330 yards on 70 carries) has almost identical rushing numbers to Vereen (328 yards on 70 carries) but is the team leader in rushing TDs. It's amazing what three hours in Indianapolis can do for a guy like Gray.
--And while much of Gray's success on Sunday night came as the result of outstanding blocking from the five linemen plus Cameron Fleming plus Rob Gronkowski, Gray earned his most important run all by himself.
It came on a third-and-1 at the Indianapolis 4-yard line. The Patriots led by just four points, and they desperately wanted a touchdown to build up a comfortable cushion. Brady handed to Gray, but he was immediately met in the backfield by Jerrell Freeman:
Yet Gray was able to slip loose of Freeman's tackle, leaving the 240-pounder befuddled face-down on the turf. Gray then barreled his way through a group of blue jerseys en route to picking up a first down.
Brady threw a touchdown to Tim Wright on the very next play, and those ended up being the winning points of the ballgame.
Rushing for 199 yards and four touchdowns is nice and all, but for my money, that two-yard run on third down was Gray's biggest of the night.
--As far as broadcast clichés go, Julian Edelman will always be "the former college quarterback," and unfortunately, Coby Fleener will always be "Coby Fleener, who played with Luck at Stanford."
(Oh and you can't correctly pronounce "Hoomanawanui" without patting yourself on the back, even though it's your job to pronounce things correctly.)
(Oh, right, and there's a ton of foul territory in Oakland, and Doc Rivers is a master of drawing up plays coming out of timeouts, and Jimmy Graham played basketball in college, and so on. There are too many of these.)
--I am, however, willing to forgive Collinsworth, because he put a big ol' circle around my man, Bryan Stork.
"The Brady 6" was a good little documentary. You know, the one where we look back with jaws agape at the fact that six quarterbacks were drafted before Tom Brady in 2000. But when you consider that 11 interior linemen were chosen over Stork this year, I think we can all agree that "The Stork 11" is going to blow the Brady film out of the water.
--I struggle to comprehend basic concepts, so I really appreciated this 1979-era graphic to help me understand that a coach tries to do things to disrupt the opponent's plans.
Strong stuff, really.
(This was shown when the Colts were on offense, which means someone in the truck had to find footage of Luck on the sidelines and "produce" this mini-masterpiece.)
--I feel like if I were a defensive coach on the Colts, I might have prepared my guys a little bit better. I don't know. I think I might have said, "Hey, fellas, listen up! Shane Vereen is a person, and he is on the Patriots, and he might get the ball and so you should consider covering him in this here game on Sunday night!"
I guess this one coach on the sidelines tried to tell his guys, but it was too little too late at that point.
--This dude is crazy.
That's all I've got to say about that.
--Friendly reminder that the Patriots were three-point underdogs going into this game. Yet they won the game by 22 points, despite Tom Brady belatedly celebrating Halloween by dressing up as Jay Cutler for the entire first half. I don't understand why the Patriots are ever getting points from Vegas, but they have in their last two games, and they've them by a combined 44 points.
--The Patriots won by 22 points. Imagine what it would have been if the incompetent officiating crew didn't take two New England points off the board and give Indianapolis a free possession.
I've seen a lot of ridiculous calls in my lifetime, but the officials ruling that the "impetus of the kick" forced the ball into the end zone on that should-have-been safety is the most outrageous thing that's ever been told to me. (OK, just about everything the NHL Department of Player Safety has tried to tell me has been more ridiculous, but this was close.)
I mean, do the officials know that everybody watching the game has eyeballs, too? Like, hi, yes, we can see. And we can see that yes, the "impetus of the kick" sent the ball into the end zone, but the kick in question was off the foot of Griff Whalen, not Stephen Gostkowksi's.
What the officials are basically telling NFL teams here is that if you screw up and you're about to get smoked on your own 2-yard line, just kick the ball back into your end zone and jump on it, and you'll earn yourself 18 free yards*!!
(*Offer only valid for home teams losing by 15 points on a nationally televised game where we don't want folks to change the channel or go to bed.)
--Everybody on the Internet started making premature confetti cannon jokes when some nitwit in Indy fired up the ol' cannon on a play when Ahmad Bradshaw came up a half-yard short of the goal line. Jokes are fine and all, but everybody was missing the point: The Colts fire off confetti cannons when they score touchdowns, even if all that touchdown does is get them within eight points of the opponent. This is perhaps the most loser thing I've ever heard. Confetti exists to celebrate championships, not minor accomplishments amid getting blown out.
For years, I've considered the Atlanta Hawks to be the embarrassment of sports for the way they rained confetti down on the court after playoff wins (not series wins, just games). But at least they waited until they actually won something before dropping confetti on the field. Woof, Indianapolis. Worse than the Atlanta Hawks. That's bad.
--I also saw a ton of tweets accusing Lucas Oil Stadium of pumping in crowd noise after the place got suspiciously loud following the Colts' punt on the opening possession. Look, to me, that's crazy talk, the type of thing that the Spygate nuts talk about. It just seems wild and unrealistic to me to think that's a real thing.
But then ... after Jonas Gray's third touchdown, Al Michaels said the stadium went into "silent mode." Silent Mode? Kind of seems like a setting on the Illegal Pumped-In Noise Volume Control box, doesn't it? Al Michaels knows everything.
--Julian Edelman (he played quarterback in college, did you know that??) still gets no respect. Either that, or the Colts defense is even worse than advertised.
On New England's first drive, the Patriots needed to convert just one third down. The Colts decided to tightly cover Danny Amendola, thereby leaving Edelman alone to make a catch and move the chains. Dumb football.
But hey, at least you had Amendola covered. That is what's important.
Later in the first, with the Patriots facing a third-and-10, the Colts gave Edelman this much room to operate coming off the line of scrimmage:
Yeah, spoiler alert: That didn't work.
I just don't know what else Julian Edelman has to do before teams/people/broadcasters/whoever start treating him like a legitimate receiving threat.
--There was a play early in the game when everyone on the Colts started moving. Everyone except the center. It was the most obvious instance of a penalty you'll ever see ... but I think I personally would have liked to see a couple more flags thrown. You can never be too safe.
--I'll be telling my grandkids someday about how great Adam Vinatieri used to be. I'll likely be saying this to my grandkids while a 93-year-old Adam Vinatieri is lining up a 44-yard field goal in a Los Angeles-London Super Bowl being played in Dubai.
--I've mentioned it before, but there's this social phenomenon every time Tom Brady throws an interception. People rush to get out ahead of everyone else in criticizing the quarterback for what was a painfully obvious mistake.
"Bad pass."
"Bad decision."
"Bad pass by Brady."
"Brady with a bad pass."
"Brady with YET ANOTHER bad pass WHEN WILL YOU PEOPLE OPEN YOUR EYES?"
These tweeters (Twitterers?) are all insane people with mental conditions. Tom Brady is a human being playing an insanely fast sport while surrounded by behemoths, and sometimes he screws up. The fact that it's such a rare occasion is what makes him great. But thank you for telling me his rushed, back-foot floater to nobody was a bad pass. I appreciate your football commentary and look forward to more of it.
--It seemed pretty clear that Brady checked out of a run play and switched to a passing play before lobbing that awful interception before halftime. Yet from the looks of Belichick's conversation with Josh McDaniels, it didn't look like the boss was willing to blame Brady.
--All in all, it was a night of firsts for Tom Brady. That was the first time he's ever lobbed up a pass to nobody, and it was also the first time he's ever hopped on a teammate for a piggyback ride.
--Danny Amendola. Hi. Don't catch punts on your own 5-yard line. And if for some reason you're feeling frisky and you do decide to catch them, don't hit the circle button and spin backward toward your own goal line. It's just never, ever going to work out for you if you do that, OK?
--Football is a very complicated sport, with defenses devising complex schemes to try to limit high-powered offenses all around the league. Yet, sometimes it just comes down to the things you learn as a 55-pound Pop Warner player: basic, fundamental tackling.
Something so simple as tackling can often make the biggest difference in games like this one. Take, for example, Jamie Collins' play on third-and-6 late in the second quarter. Jamie Collins had Ahmad Bradshaw 1-on-1:
Collins overpursued the slightest bit as Bradshaw planted his leg and cut back, but Collins was able to stick with him and haul him down, forcing a punt.
In the third quarter, with the Colts facing a third-and-6 again, Darrelle Revis allowed a short completion to Reggie Wayne but easily closed in on the receiver and brought him down well short of the first down marker.
You miss those tackles, who knows, the game can completely change.
Tackling, man. Tackling.
--Quick note: Brandon LaFell had a couple of bad drops in the Denver game, but I thought it was noteworthy that Brady went back to him in the second half. It was a show of trust, and LaFell said after the game that he appreciated Brady sticking with him.
Well, in this Colts game, the roles were kind of reversed. Brady just wasn't himself for whatever reason, but LaFell came through with what I consider to be a massively important catch on a third-and-6 in the third quarter. It was a drive that ended with a touchdown that really put the game away, but it was LaFell coming up with this catch that kept it alive and moving:
LaFell, who had just 46 receiving yards through the first three weeks of the season, is now just 101 yards shy of matching his career high of 677. He's already matched his career high with five touchdowns, and there remain six games on the schedule. It took him a minute to catch on, but LaFell is working well in Brady's offense -- to the point where the receiver bailed out the quarterback on Sunday night.
--It was hilarious, though, when LaFell came down with a 22-yard catch up the left sideline in the fourth quarter and then threw the ball up the field in celebration. Quickly realizing what he did (and that the offense was running to the line), LaFell tucked his tail between his legs, chased after the ball he had just thrown, and then nonchalantly tossed it to the official. It's as if he senses the glare of Darth Belichick over his shoulder, and he quickly corrected course. The power of Belichick knows no bounds.
--It's not that Dont'a Hightower has necessarily been considered "slow," so much as his speed has just never really been considered an asset. So it surprised me to see him size up Andrew Luck from this distance ...
... and then still be able to track him down and force a bad pass:
Andy Luck is a fast dude. Impressive.
--Big win? Yeah, guess so. But Bill's on to Detroit.
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Read more from Michael Hurley by clicking here, or find him on Twitter @michaelFhurley.
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