Healthy dose for Pats
Year makes big difference on injury front
FOXBORO — At a certain point, injuries can cross the barrier from testing a team’s depth to obliterating it.
Last year it was a case of the latter for the Patriots, but to this point, they are in unquestionably better shape as they prepare to host the Houston Texans in a divisional round playoff game on Saturday night.
At this time last year against the Kansas City Chiefs in the same round, the Pats had 14 players on injured reserve. They lost an NFL-high 245 man games to injury, according to ManGamesLost.com. This year, that number was more than cut in half, with the Pats losing 122 man games to injury and just three players on IR.
Those player losses a year ago — many clustered both in the backfield and along the line — handcuffed offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels’ playcalling in such a way that nearly every down was a passing one.
This year, with an improved offensive line and healthy backfield, the legitimate threat of a running game exists. When the Patriots rolled into Denver for the AFC Championship Game last year, the running game was nonexistent.
Among the wounded were offensive linemen Nate Solder, Ryan Wendell and Tre’ Jackson, fullback James Develin and running backs LeGarrette Blount and Dion Lewis. The defensive casualties included linemen Trey Flowers and Dominique Easley, although Flowers was not yet a regular contributor and the departed Easley was rarely healthy here.
This season, the injury damage was far more contained. Jackson and offensive tackle Sebastian Vollmer have been on the physically unable to perform list all year while defensive end Greg Scruggs, linebacker Jonathan Freeny and tight end Rob Gronkowski sit on the IR.
The only other possible subtraction is defensive tackle Alan Branch, who missed the past two practice sessions for reasons yet undisclosed.
No doubt the absence of Gronkowski hurts, but the sheer quantity of last year’s injuries was overwhelming. The depth chart at running back was down to Brandon Bolden, primarily a special teamer, third-down back James White and a past-hisprime Steven Jackson.
Without Develin, the Iformation was all but removed from the playbook, and running between the tackles was an exercise in futility.
Never was the problem more evident than in the Broncos game, in which the Pats, trailing 20-12 in the fourth quarter, faced a fourth-and-1 from the Denver 16-yard line. Out of a one-back set, wide receiver Julian Edelman dragged across from right to left behind the line as quarterback Tom Brady threw the ball off his back foot with DeMarcus Ware bearing down on him.
It fooled no one. Cornerbacks Chris Harris and Aqib Talib stopped Edelman short to force the turnover on downs.
This year, even without Gronkowski, the Pats are better balanced on offense. As of yesterday, with the pending return of Danny Amendola from a high-ankle sprain, the entire wide receiver corps has a clean bill of health. Martellus Bennett and Matt Lengel are a pair of capable tight ends. Blount, Lewis, White and Bolden all appear injury-free, as well.
The result? Options. McDaniels has the luxury of using numerous personnel groupings to attack defenses in multiple ways.
But Solder isn’t one to draw comparisons from one year to the next in regards to health.
“I think the way I think about it is no matter who’s here, we’ve got to be good to go,” Solder said. “You can’t hinge on someone’s health because it’s such a fickle thing. Clearly, someone will get hurt or does get hurt. That just happens.
“It’s part of the game. No matter what happens, you’re ready to go, and as the backup or whoever needs to go over there, you jump in and keep rolling.”