I think that's part of the issue with Gronk: that you can't assume he'll go 4 games without injuring his back anymore. This is a guy who's had at least 3 major back injuries that we know of, and big football players with back problems pretty much always deal with them for the rest of their careers. This year's back injury was the fourth documented one, and at this point I think he's just crossed into Jason Peters kind of territory where, no matter how good he is when 100% healthy, you know he'll never be even 80% healthy for even half a season so it's a moot point.
Re: today's article, it ended stating that Pats fans should feel concerned about the disconnect, but I'm really not concerned because I don't think there's a ton at stake just because I don't think Gronk is all that valuable anymore. Yeah he's a huge difference-maker in the brief stretches that you can have him healthy, but he's reliably unhealthy. I'm basically assuming that he'll play his last game as a Patriot sometime between yesterday and February, and that's fine. His contract is structured so that they can move on from him with minimal cap hit after this season: they stand to save $10M by cutting him, and based on what he's done over the past couple years I have a hard time seeing him providing $10M worth of production next year, so I think I'd rather have the cap space.
From this point forward in his career, I think the best you can reasonably hope for from him is that he'll be fringe top-10 TE who will miss at least 4 games per season and will be playing at half-strength for at least half of the games he does play. He'll never be worth his cap figure again, and I think that's why Belichick tried to trade him during the offseason in the first place. If the Pats move on from him and allocate his money elsewhere starting in the very near future that'll probably be for the best anyway.
We don't really have any way of knowing the true nature of Gronk's current back issue, but we can at least make an educated guess.
FWIW, it was originally reported by Reiss as "spasms". If true, spasms might indicate something more related to muscle/tendon/ligament stiffness or strain rather than to some sort of vertebral damage. Given that Gronk is still playing, rather than on IR, the former seems far more likely than the latter.
The fact that Gronk has played intermittently since the first report, and his "off-ON-off again" appearance on this past week's injury report, seems to support the hypothesis that it's something chronic - better some days, worse others - but that still doesn't really offer any support for a firm prognosis, positive or negative, for the rest of this season or beyond. It could dog him for the rest of this season and clear up afterward. It could ease-up/become more manageable by the post-season, or even before. Those are equal possibilities given our lack of access to his medical chart.
However, also given the fact that Gronk is still playing
a lot, when available at all ...
... Wk-8, 90% of the snaps
-- after missing one week, and prior to a three-week rest, including the BYE
... Wk-12, 99% of the snaps
... Wk-13, 99% of the snaps
- it seems apparent that the Pats coaches feel that he's providing significant value on the field, our "eyeball test" notwithstanding. If he wasn't, he simply wouldn't be out there, much less for entire games. That said, someone suggested that Gronk may not have been used as much the past two games if Allen had been healthy. This seems like a reasonable hypothesis, one that seems likely to be tested as soon as Allen is available to play again.
As to Gronk's cap-cost value ...
Again, it was just one year ago that he was effectively a top-10 wide receiver in terms of production - IMHO, well worth $10M, given how much more top-10 WRs typically cost (and completely leaving out the bonus he provides with his blocking). Through his first six games
this season, prior to his back issue, Gronk was pretty much on pace to at least match his receiving production from last season, except for scoring (he just wasn't being targeted in the red zone).
Now, at least a couple people on this board have claimed that Gronk "didn't look like the same player, even at the start of the season". One even claimed that he only put up those stats because he wasn't being covered as heavily as he has been in the past, because "he's not the same player that he once was". From my perspective, production is production. If defenses were allowing Gronk top-10 WR production (or something close to it) by not covering him as heavily, that seems pretty stupid on their part.
As to Gronk's future with the team beyond this season, we simply don't have a factual diagnosis or prognosis regarding his current "back issue". His "history", as far as we know it in detail, is largely irrelevant, since we have no idea if the current issue is medically-related to his previous back problems or not. We don't even know, medically-speaking, how likely his previous back problems are to recur. We can't even make a legitimate "educated guess." He had no back issues in 2017.
IOW, we simply don't
know how his health will affect his play the rest of this season, much less next season - our eyeball tests and the profound, definitive conclusions of the geniuses in the media notwithstanding. [
SIDEBAR: How is it even possible for Mehta to reach a conclusion based on his own "eyeball test" when his head is so far up his ass? That's some sort of physiological miracle, right there. Maybe he uses his navel as a peephole?]
We also don't
know how the Pats value Gronk now (in cap terms), much less how they will four months from now. I personally never saw any direct quotes from BB, Caserio, Gronk, or from a Lions decision-maker, to confirm the story about an aborted trade last spring. Even if that story is all true, we don't really know why the Pats were trying to trade him, and we don't really know that the Pats are still thinking that way now.
We also don't
know what's actually going on in Gronk's head about all of this right now, or how his "feelings" may change over the course of the rest of this season and beyond. At the moment, he may feel that he's had enough pain and should retire at the end of the season. Alternatively, he may still be eager to play and enjoying it, and may feel the same way next spring. But he may also change his mind over the summer and retire at the start of 2019 Camp, like Nink did in 2017. All equal possibilities, because we don't
know.
I'm as eager to know what's going to happen as anyone else, but I refuse to make assumptions based on things I don't know for a fact. So, no, I can't assume that Gronk
will go four games without injuring his back (or another body part), but I also can't assume that he
won't go four games, or even an entire season. He only missed one game all of last season due to injury, that absence being due to a minor knee injury that Gronk himself felt he could have played on if it hadn't been a Sunday-Thursday short week.