"I haven't talked to him personally about it, but I can just tell by his emotions and his facial features that he's super frustrated with it. You can see at the end of the game how they ended the game double-covering him, pressing him off the line. He just wants to get the ball in his hands and make plays. You just can't do it when nobody else is getting open. You can't have single-coverage if no one else can beat single-coverage."
After making seven catches in Week 1, Gronkowski was limited to a pair of catches in Jacksonville and four against the Lions.
The inability of the Pats' wideouts to get open and take coverage away from Gronkowski was easy to identify, an issue that clearly wasn't as prevalent a year ago with the likes of Danny Amendola (now in Miami) and Brandin Cooks (now with the Rams) in the mix.
"I think they thought they had what they needed," said Chris Gronkowski, who played for five NFL teams over four seasons as a fullback. "I think once (Julian) Edelman comes back it's going to be a whole different game out there. He's a man-beater. He's going to get open if you put a guy on him. Once Edelman is back I think the whole game changes. I think they were kind of comfortable with what they had. They didn't think they needed those guys around so they let them go."