FOXBOROUGH — Some thoughts and observations from The Hill as the Patriots went through the paces for the second practice open to the media.
• A couple of scheduling notes. The Patriots moved their mandatory minicamp from June 15-17 up a week to June 9-11 (thanks a lot for that, not that any of us had anything planned or anything according to your schedule that had been out since April 8).
The veterans will be done at that point, with the rookies sticking around for a big longer. The Patriots are apparently bypassing one (June 8) and possibly two (June 4) scheduled OTA practices.
• The Patriots will hold a joint practice with the Colts at Gillette on August 11, ahead of their August 13 exhibition game. The Eagles will be in for two practices, August 19 and 20, before the Aug. 22 exhibition.
• OL coach Doug Marrone was out after having his knee cleaned up.
"We work our coaches pretty hard here, just like our players," Mike Vrabel said. "I think it's best to have that done now, so that Doug will be ready to go for training camp. There won't be any setbacks."
• Vrabel on Christian Gonzalez's situation: "I think the contract is the business and the professional side of this. The personal side, I don't want to let anything interfere with that. I want Christian to be ready when he comes back. I would imagine that he would be here next week. If he is, then we'll coach him, be ready to move on, and get him ready to help us and help himself. Contracts are part of professional sports, I understand that. But I also know that those should remain private. Like any contract negotiation, you want to make sure that everybody feels like they get something out of it, and I'll leave it at that."
• Vrabel confirmed the season-ending injury to free-agent TE Julian Hill (knee): "Julian won't be able to play this season. That's plain and simple. Devastating, awful. Really enjoy the person, and want to have him around here as much as we possibly can. But that's just because he wouldn't be able to play this season. So, that's just disappointing because of the impact that he made in a short amount of time with his teammates, and just the person that he is, the way that he practiced. We want Julian to be a part of us as much as possible. He's just not going to do that on the field this year."
• A.J. Brown was on the field in a very limited capacity, as you would expect, as he works his way back into football shape and into the Patriots' playbook.
Brown caught his first pass from Drake Maye, a little 7-yard hitch. He took four snaps in all, all at the left X position.
Brown certainly looks the part of an impressive physical specimen. He's not as tall as he might appear on TV (he measured 6 feet and ½ inch at the combine), but the guy is really put together from head to toe.
Of what we saw, I'd say the most impressive thing was watching Brown go