Welcome to first and 10, a roundup of all the (mostly) Patriots-related news you need to start your Tuesday. Grab your coffee and let’s get to it.
Tom Brady had his weekly sitdown with Jim Gray before this week's "Monday Night Football" contest, and he was asked about his new teammate. Here's a small portion of the Q&A:
Josh Gordon has been traded this afternoon to the Patriots from Cleveland -- a tremendous talent, has also had a number of problems. What are your thoughts on Josh Gordon coming over to the Patriots?
"You know, I hate to make projections and expectations. That’s not fair. I’ve never met Josh personally, just like I hadn’t met some of the guys that have come in the last couple weeks. So we’ll see how it goes this week and hopefully he can work hard, put the team first and end up helping us in any role that he can find for himself on the team."
How long, realistically, can it take to have a chemistry with somebody at this time during the season.
"Any time you get someone in the middle of the season, there’s obviously a lot of things that have happened that have got the team to a certain point that they weren’t a part of. So you know, I’m not sure how many of those things matter, but you’d like to try to get up to speed as quickly as possible and it’s really up to the individuals. … You know all these things need to play themselves out. I’m not going to project anything. I’m just going to try to go be the positive, enthusiastic leader that I am and try to be a great quarterback and try to embrace whoever’s on the team. And we’ve all got to play a lot better than we played yesterday and that’s really where our focus should be."
Final thought on this, you’ve talked a lot over the years about trust. How long does it take to trust a guy? He just doesn’t walk in the locker room tomorrow and you put your arm around him and then all of a sudden, it’s like Edelman or Welker or Gronk.
"Yeah, certainly not. ... I always think trust is whatever receiver is out there, you know, you tell them to run a certain route and they run it the way that you talked about it, the ball is thrown, it’s caught, it’s a positive play and then you do it again. If it’s a flip of the coin and 50-50, sometimes it’s right, sometimes it’s wrong, I mean nobody can really depend on that. The coaches don’t want to see that, the players don’t want to see that. You want to know that the guys you’re lining up next to that they got it. They’ve got their responsibility taken care of and that frees you up to think about what your responsibilities are. But if you’re worried about this guy or that guy or this or that, you know, it just takes away from what your focus needs to be as an individual. Everybody wants good teammates that can focus on, as an individual, what they have to do in order to help the team."
Now, on with the links...
1. Greg's column looks at one very specific question: How did the Patriots get to a point where they felt it necessary to add a guy like Gordon?
2. I had the initial look at the deal, which included a fifth-round pick going the other way. No surprise, as Bill Belichick has a thing about fifth-rounders -- the Pats have made only four fifth-round selections since 2011.
3. I had a Monday afternoon Q&A. As I predicted, it was epic.
4. Miguel's latest mailbag takes a look at some of the ramification of the move.
5. Brady is facing another former defensive coordinator this weekend when he lines up against Matt Patricia and the Lions. How has he done in year's past when he's gone against former New England DC's?
6. Mike Reiss calls the Gordon pickup a "Why not?" sort of acquisition when you figure everything into the equation.
7. Tom E. Curran has the McCourty Brothers hailing the move to get Gordon.
8. Nick Shook of NFL.com weighs in on the trade.
9. Lorin Cox of Pro Football Focus looks at the deal for Gordon and what sort of impact it could have on New England.
10. Jeff Seidel of the Detroit-Free Press says Detroit's adopted version of "The Patriot Way" hasn't worked so far.
Extra Point: So things seem to be going well in Pittsburgh...
Trade me let’s find out https://t.co/4OeepI78zy
— Antonio Brown (@AB84) September 17, 2018