FOXBOROUGH, Mass. – Entering his 20th season as head coach of the New England Patriots, Bill Belichick heads into training camp on Thursday with his characteristic focus locked on the short term.
“I’m thinking about trying to have a good day today,” Belichick said on Wednesday. “That’s what I’m thinking about. Then our first practice is (Thursday), so getting out there and having a good practice (Thursday).”
That was Belichick’s response to a question about the Patriots repeating as Super Bowl champions, something no team has done since New England in 2003 and 2004. They also have a chance to become just the second team to appear in four consecutive Super Bowls (which the Bills did from 1990-93), and the first to do so in the salary cap era. While we’re at it, the Patriots could also win their seventh Super Bowl as a franchise, which would put them one above the Steelers for the all-time record.
But none of this is currently on Belichick’s radar as he turns his focus to training camp, the less-glamorous portion of the season which he nonetheless enjoys.
“I enjoy all parts of football season,” Belichick said. “From beginning to end, off-season, in-season – I enjoy all of it.”
Generally, when teams outside of New England reach the Super Bowl, they don’t return to camp with realistic expectations of getting back there. Since 2000, the Legion of Boom Seahawks are the only other team with consecutive Super Bowl appearances (2013-14). The salary cap has made this especially difficult as teams tend to max out their spending in that Super Bowl push.
But the Patriots appear to have to gone in the other direction this season, building what many see as an improved roster from 2018 that has one glaring Gronk-sized hole. With tight end Rob Gronkowski retired, the Pats have six weeks to answer the question of precisely how they will replace him.
The team brought former Patriot Benjamin Watson out of retirement, and he will face a four-game suspension at the start of the season for using performance-enhancing drugs. They also acquired Matt LaCosse who is with his third team since going undrafted in 2015. On Wednesday, they signed free agent Lance Kendricks, a seventh-year veteran who played with Green Bay last season.
None of these players alone are expected to produce the 682 yards Gronk gave New England in 13 games last season, but history has demonstrated that the Patriots can succeed without Gronkowski.
In 2016, they won the Super Bowl after he suffered a season-ending injury in Week 8. While some would point to Martellus Bennett as a high-caliber backup, Bennett’s production severely dropped off in Gronk’s absence. Suffering from ankle and shoulder injuries, Bennett’s per-game yardage dropped by 28 percent from Week 9 through the Super Bowl.
In fact, New England has routinely lost key offensive weapons in its recent run (Gronk in ’16, Edelman in ’17 and Josh Gordon in ’18) and still reached the Super Bowl each time, winning twice. And even without Edelman in Super Bowl LII, the Patriots gained 505 yards through the air alone.
As they have done in the past, the Patriots will surely look to other skill positions to move the ball.
What isn’t as clear after losing Gronkowski and superb blocking tight end Dwayne Allen is how they will replace the contributions those players made to the running game. With a roster that appears to be laden with talent and primed to contend for yet another Super Bowl, that is among the big questions for Belichick to sort out as New England opens another training camp.
(Dave Brown is a freelance correspondent who covers the Patriots for the Monitor. You can follow him on Twitter @ThatDaveBrown.)