Gronk Spoke For All Patriots Fans On Fox During Halftime Today, Going Off On Mac Jones And How Terrible This New England Team Is
(apologies for this blog being all over the place, looking like a schizophrenic person wrote it. I am extremely hungover and furious watching the Patriots get owned AGAIN by a trash NY Giants team)
"It's very frustrating. And it's very frustrating as an ex-Patriots to watch the game. It's actually one of the first times this year I've watched a complete half of a Patriots game. And let me tell you, it's as bad as what the fans have been saying. Mac Jones should have thrown about four picks already."
Tell 'em Big Rob.
Two picks, and a fumble that was lucky to be recovered by his lineman. You can tell by the body language of his offensive teammates, and lack of help to pick him up off the ground that this team is checked out and checked out on Jones.
This Giants-Patriots game is one of the worst displays of football we've seen all season. And there has been some fucking putrid football this year. (Cue TB12)
(Sidebar- Barry Sanders disagrees with Brady and thinks this is the best season of football he can remember seeing because his Lions are actually legit.
"Maybe he's talking about the teams he played for, but the team I played for?" Sanders said. "The team that I played for, no. It's anything but mediocre. I saw that comment somewhere. Look, for us as Lions fans, maybe I just have blinders on, because of how we're leading the division, how well we're playing. But I still see a great product. Still see great teams and a very popular game. I would listen to anything he has to say, and I'd have to get into more detail what he's referring to, but I think this is the greatest product, the greatest thing we've ever seen as Lions fans. So I'm gonna enjoy this for a while."
And don't get me started on Alex Smith chiming in that Brady played "in a cupcake division his entire career" and won his last Super Bowl with these same bullshit rules he's complaining about.
I will say I respect the balls on him to say all this with Teddy Bruschi sitting right next to him though.
But back to Gronk and his comments. This is shocking to me on so many levels. People give me shit for name-dropping and shit on here but I don't get what's wrong about talking to somebody or hanging out with them when it's pertinent to something. Rob was in Chicago a couple of weeks ago for a "speaking engagement," and we did dinner. My friends Vin and Chris also came in from Boston for the night, and we had a great dinner at Gibson's Italia.
At dinner, we talked about how awful football quality in general was this season, especially the Patriots. Without getting anybody trouble, Rob said a lot of what he said today during halftime. I told him how it is laugh-out-loud funny watching him on the Fox Postgame shows this year after the Patriots' losses whenever they get brought up by his cohosts. I said he looks like the kid in class who puts his head down praying the teacher doesn't call on them because they don't know the answer and don't want to get called on. You can just tell how badly he doesn't want to discuss Belichick, Jones, or the Pats whatsoever. He said that wasn't true and that he literally hadn't watched them play all year because he had no desire to watch bad football, and he wasn't going to say that publicly. I mentioned how Bruschi is really the only guy who's been vocal about how brutal it's been to watch, which is true.
Well, today's embarrassment in the Meadowlands broke him apparently because he admitted it on air, and mentioned it is, in fact, as bad as we the fans have been saying all year.
It's so bad that eternal optimist (and the man I suspect of being on the Kratf's payroll) Jerry is even miserable.
Today's first half was so bad Fox threw Strahan and Gronk on mid-game to talk about the glory days.
Among the Patriots bashing between the two, Rob told Strahan that in the second Giants Super Bowl, his ankle was pretty much hanging on by a thread, and that's why he was basically a decoy all game.
I think the reason New England is getting killed like they are while teams like the Giants get a pass on being God-awful is because teams like that have been dumpster fires for as long as anybody can remember. The Patriots were the epitome of franchise superiority just a short time ago, and the wheels have come off so suddenly, and so drastically, that it's almost worse in a way. Because it was so preventable. I'm typing this as the bum Belichick let Nick Folk go to Tennessee for just missed a kick to send the game to overtime, and it's the perfect microcosm of this season and this disaster the Patriots are in. Belichick still thinks he's the smartest guy in the game, that he doesn't have to pay anybody (except himself), that first-round draft picks are overrated and overpaid, and that he can make guys like Mac Jones flourish in his "system".
We've got guys like Florio now beginning to carry water for him, and I expect this to grow louder as this nightmare of a season winds down.
"It's not Bill's fault, he's playing the hand he's been dealt by ownership."
If you genuinely believe one iota of this, you have rocks in your head.
Belichick has had a full say in everything down to who cleans the bathrooms at Foxboro for two decades now. The Krafts, to a fault, have entrusted absolutely everything to him to the point I don't even think Jonathan and Belichick have spoken in ages. They stay out of his way, and he only deals with RKK when he needs to.
He's not giving a middle finger to them by sticking with Jones because they forced him to draft Mac. Yes, he wanted Justin Fields or Trey Lance, and had to settle on Jones when they both went before New England picked at 15. Do we really think he'd be in a better position with either of them? He ran the greatest player to ever play the game out of town with no back up plan in place. Inexcuseable. He then drafted Mac because he was all that was left at 15, and his boy Saban sold him a lemon. What's made matters even worse is that he has surrounded him with absolutely nothing to help. He paid not one, but two bum tight ends more money than he ever offered Gronk (yah, Hunter Henry and Jonnu Smith, $37.5 million? puke). His offensive line is an embarrassment without Dante Scarnechia in the mix anymore, he continues to grab nobody WRs off the waiver wire expecting to make chicken salad out of chicken shit, and has basically abandoned the one bright spot in the offense last season- the run game, completely.
I know we enjoyed unprecedented success for 20 years and really don't have a right to bitch and complain, but it's infuriating that the reason this is all ending so badly is due to pride.
"Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall." - Proverbs 16:18
p.s. - I am gonna shamelessly name drop here because it's my business, after our dinner, Rob came by our bar, Good Night John Boy, and took over as our new door guy and CO2 operator.