Sportblog | The Guardian — New England Patriots RSS



Is Rob Gronkowski going to be the next American action hero?

The New England Patriots tight end has hinted he may consider retiring at the age of 28 – and there are plenty of reasons for swapping the NFL for HollywoodFollowing his team’s Super Bowl loss this month, New England Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski hinted he is contemplating retirement. It’s not entirely certain how seriously the 28-year-old is taking his decision – many believe this is merely a contract negotiation stunt – but if he does retire, the NFL’s loss could become Hollywood’s gain.Sylvester Stallone and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, who himself made the leap from wrestling to Hollywood, have been trying to convince Gronkowski to try his hand at acting, while David Arquette, who apparently is still in the...

Continue reading



Tom Brady was vulnerable against the Jaguars – but he refuses to break

A hand injury was supposed to hamper the New England quarterback but – as ever – he took apart the opposition when it mattered“We’re not talking about open-heart surgery,” New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick said Sunday evening. Belichick was talking about Tom Brady’s throwing hand, injured in practice last week. But Brady was pretty surgical as he carved apart the Jacksonville Jaguars on the way to his eighth Super Bowl. In a fourth quarter the Jaguars will never forget, he took away their heart and then he pulled the Super Bowl dream to which they so precariously clung those final few minutes, until it was gone for good. @EAGLES FLEA FLICKER TD ALERT! #MINvsPHI #NFLPlayoffs pic.twitter.com/KOsyOgmqROBill Belichick treated that...

Continue reading



The NFL playoffs show you don't need a great quarterback to succeed

The NFL is a quarterback-driven league but three of the four teams left standing this season don’t have superstars under centerEach April at the top of the NFL draft, teams grab at quarterbacks they envision leading them to glory. But none of the four quarterbacks remaining in the NFL playoffs took that textbook path to the conference title game. The Eagles, Vikings, Patriots and Jaguars each made it to the championship round without an early pick, “franchise QB” leading the way, not the way in which it’s supposed to be done. Jacksonville’s Blake Bortles was a first-round pick, sure. But in the four seasons from the time he was taken with the No3 overall pick in the 2014 draft to...

Continue reading



Inside Tom Brady's strange pseudoscience: bioceramic sleepwear and neutral ash

The Patriots quarterback’s new book makes some dubious claims about how he has maintained his fitness into his 40s. What do the experts make of it all?Tom Brady may well be the greatest NFL player of all time. He already possesses or shares a host of quarterback records – career wins, Super Bowl wins, career playoff touchdowns – and if he continues to play as long as he has hinted, he may finish his career owning them all. But while Brady has it all, his attempt to pass on his performance secrets in his book, The TB12 Method: How to Achieve a Lifetime of Sustained Peak Performance, falls flat and contains all sorts of dubious claims. The overall message of...

Continue reading



The Jimmy Garoppolo trade leaves the New England Patriots horribly exposed

Tom Brady is as brilliant as ever at 40. But the Patriots are one bad tackle away from mounting a Super Bowl challenge without a reliable quarterbackWe should know better than to question Bill Belichick’s football genius. It’s almost exactly one year since the New England Patriots head coach traded linebacker Jamie Collins to the Cleveland Browns in exchange for a third-round draft pick. It’s a move that still defies conventional thought 12 months on. Collins appeared at the Pro Bowl months earlier after recording five forced fumbles, five sacks and 51 solo tackles in the 2015 regular season. “The best defensive player we’ve got, the most athletic guy on the team,” is how former Patriots team-mate Dont’a Hightower described...

Continue reading