New England Infirmary: Pileup Of Injuries Nothing New For Patriots

It’s become an annual tradition not unlike the gray skies, sheets of rain and piles of wet leaves we’ve been dealing with in these parts all week.

I’m talking about the Patriots and their yearly rash of major injury issues that plunder the depth chart and occasionally lead to guys like Matthew Mulligan starting in the biggest game of the season.

When Jerod Mayo and Stevan Ridley went down for the season in Buffalo a couple weeks ago, after an initial wave of horror and sadness as the cart came out for both of them, a feeling of resignation took hold. If you said something along the lines of “here we go again,” only far more profane, you most certainly weren’t alone. And when the reports of Chandler Jones’s hip injury surfaced on Tuesday, even though he will supposedly be back in about a month, you’re forgiven if you wanted to fling your iPad across the room.

The facts are these: in every season but one going back to 2008, the year after they fielded what was arguably their best team, the Pats have been smashed with at least one injury of the devastating variety, e.g. the loss of someone massively important to the greater good at a horrible time. And while football is a brutal game in which every team must weather the injury storm year after year after year, it’s begun to feel like a cruel joke when it comes to the Patriots.

It’s not a joke though. It’s a very real issue that the Pats can’t seem to avoid. Have a look.

2008
By far the most painful, powerful injury of the current era, Tom Brady’s torn ACL not even nine minutes into the season doomed the Pats and deprived them of the chance to go on a season-long rampage to avenge coming so close to perfection the year before. They would wind up going an unfathomable 11-5 with Matt Cassel under center, a preview of how adaptable they would prove to be in the face of injuries for the next several years. It’s also one of the greatest testaments imaginable to the coaching ability of Bill Belichick and Josh McDaniels. But they also missed the playoffs thanks to a variety of tiebreakers, the second of only two postseason absences since the first title year of 2001.

2009

A miserable season basically ended in Week 17 when Wes Welker slipped on a patch of bad turf at Houston’s Reliant Stadium and shredded both his ACL and MCL. The Pats were annihilated by the Ravens in a Wild Card game at Gillette Stadium a week later, a beatdown so potent and exacting that it’s unlikely a healthy Welker would have helped all that much. But seeing as how he rolled up 123 catches and well over 1,300 yards in just 14 games that year, the impact of his loss was still pretty major.

2010

The one season in which the Pats avoided getting steamrolled by the injury bus. Of course, that didn’t help them in their 28-21, divisional round loss to the Jets, which rendered an incredible, 14-2 regular season irrelevant.

2011

Things began to snowball for the Pats in the untimely injury department in 2011, starting with veteran center Dan Koppen, who went down with a fractured ankle in the first half of the team’s Week 1 game at Miami. He’d never play for the Pats again after nine years and two rings as a Patriot.

There was a long stretch of peace and quiet until defensive star Andre Carter was lost to a quad tear in Week 15 at Denver. Carter had 10 sacks in 14 games for the Pats that season, including four in a huge win over the Jets in November. The Pats would reach the Super Bowl without him, but the pressure he brought on a regular basis was not replaced until Jones was drafted the following spring.

Then, in the AFC Championship Game against the Ravens, the Pats were thrust onto the Gronk roller coaster for the first time. Rob Gronkowski had his ankle rolled up in that game (amazingly, by the same guy, Bernard Pollard, who maimed Brady in 2008 and was nearest to Welker when he went down in 2009) rendering him no more useful than a decoy in the team’s Super Bowl loss to the Giants two weeks later.

2012

Gronk again, this time due to a forearm broken suffered while blocking on an extra point attempt in a Week 11 win over the Colts. The Pats survived this particular Gronk injury, going 4-1 in the five games he missed. But when he returned eight weeks later for a divisional round playoff game against the Houston Texans, he re-broke the same bone leaping to catch the first pass thrown his way. The Pats wound up losing to the Ravens a week later in the AFC Championship Game, and while that defeat had more to do with the fact that the defense couldn’t get off the field (more on that shortly), that game was the first piece of evidence that the Pats’ offense was nowhere near the same without Gronk.

Aqib Talib was a godsend when he arrived from Tampa Bay via trade a couple months earlier. The Pats had their first real, legit, consistently competent corner since Ty Law. But in the first quarter of that loss to Baltimore, he injured his thigh, limped off and didn’t return as the Pats defense disintegrated. It was a sign of things to come.

2013

The attrition began in Week 1 last season when both Shane Vereen and Danny Amendola went down after big games against Buffalo. Vereen ran for 101 yards on just 14 attempts and added seven catches for 58 yards, but broke his wrist in the process and didn’t play again until Week 10. Amendola posted his best game as a Patriot (10 catches, 104 yards) but aggravated a groin injury suffered in the preseason, missed four of the next seven games and still isn’t the same.

Next came big Vince Wilfork, who ruptured his Achilles in a Week 4 win at Atlanta, ending his season. Luckily, the Pats also had Tommy Kelly at defensive tackle and he was playing great, but surprise! He hurt his knee a week later against the Bengals and that was the end of him in a Pats’ uniform.

In Week 6, the same week he was lost for the season this year, Mayo suffered a torn pectoral muscle in a win over the Saints. Season over. The heart of the Pats’ defense was all gone in a three week span.

Talib, who bounced back from the thigh issue from the previous season’s playoffs, was having his best season as a pro when Mayo went down. He wasn’t just the Pats’ best corner since Law, he was Law. But he also got hurt in that game against the Saints, this time with a hip ailment. He missed the Pats’ next three games but when he came back, while he was still solid, he was never the same as he was during those first six weeks. And then, in a particularly horrid case of déjà vu, he banged up his knee in the AFC Championship Game at Denver (perhaps fittingly on a block from Wes Welker famously decried afterward by Bill Belichick), left the game early in the second quarter and that was that. In case you forgot, he plays for the Broncos now.

And last but not least, we have Gronk. Again. After missing the Pats’ first six games due to multiple surgeries and endless complications stemming from the forearm injury, as well as the back surgery he underwent in the summer, he finally returned in Week 7. Would you believe the offense suddenly became borderline unstoppable at that point? Well it did. And for seven blissful weeks, Gronk was back. Then, in Week 13 against the Cleveland Browns, he’d just caught a pass while running one of his patented seam routes when Browns’ safety T.J. Ward launched himself helmet first right into Gronk’s knee. Boom. ACL tear, season over early. Again.

It’s a pattern and an alarming one. The Pats still have nine games left to play this season before the playoffs even begin. But just as it’s been so often over the past few years, their path just to get there, and possibly beyond, is already littered with what ifs.