FOXBOROUGH - Practice No. 20 is in the books; let's run down all you need to know, including stats, 1-on-1s, lineup adjustments and observations from the joint practice with the Eagles:
SIX THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW
Christian Gonzalez makes is long awaited return. After missing as many practices as he had participated in, the cornerback came back as a full-go for Monday’s session. It wasn’t the most competitive practice, but when it was, Gonzalez was not only out there but had a pair of pass breakups in one-on-ones, dropping an interception in the back corner of the end zone (Drake Maye) while shadowing A.J. Brown, then locking up Pop Douglas. If the ankle/foot was a real issue, today’s showing should put that in the rearview. Now about that contract…
Mike Vrabel puts the genie back in the bottle. After his sharp commentary on the depth of the roster following Saturday night’s preseason game, Vrabel was asked if there was a message being sent (ownership? front office?). His response: “No, I got asked that this morning. We’re all on the same page. There is no front office. There is no back office. There is the Patriots. There is me, there is Eliot [Wolf], there is Ryan [Cowden], there is Stretch [John Streicher]. I told you those are the people that we rely on to make decisions. So, there is no message.
“And it just was Mike [Reiss] asked me, I think, about the starters playing, and I mean, we lost a couple guys that aren’t going to be with us, so you can only play that for so long. You can only do that for so long, and we’re going to need to prepare the football team, be smart and make sure that we’re as ready to go as we possibly can. And the depth was about building the depth. It is about taking the guys that we have, building them and then identifying if there’s other people that we can add to the roster. We’ll continually try to do that.”
The field was a problem. After that FieldTurf fiasco earlier this summer, you had to figure we’d moved past talking about fake grass or real grass (unless someone gets arrested for grass?). Not so fast, my friends. The Patriots practiced on the lower grass field, directly off the New Balance Athletics Center, for the first time since mandatory mini-camp, and man, oh, man, it didn’t go well. Players started slipping in individual drills and never stopped. In fact, TreVeyon Henderson slipped while making a cut during 11-on-11s, and after trying to walk off some discomfort, found himself with trainer Jim Whalen. They examined his right foot/ankle area, and after briefly testing it, Henderson disappeared into the facility and did not return.