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Will Rob Gronkowski go off against Pittsburgh Steelers?

By Kevin Parvizi

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The New England Patriots are ready to defend their home turf on Thursday night when they open up the regular season against the Pittsburgh Steelers, and we’re all excited to see if the Patriots can follow up their Super Bowl-winning season by taking full advantage of the fact that their opponents are missing many key players. The Patriots themselves won’t have “X” receiver Brandon LaFell and feature back LeGarrette Blount, but they will, of course, have Tom Brady, who will still get to throw the ball to his top target, Rob Gronkowski.

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Everybody knows that Gronkowski is the danger man on the Patriots offense, and you could argue that he is the most difficult offensive player in the NFL to stop. Gronk is the NFL’s consensus No. 1 tight end, and he caught 82 passes for 1,124 yards and 12 touchdowns in the 2014 season to cement this.

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As such, the Steelers have a specific gameplan in place that they think will allow them to stop Gronkowski, and they’ve publicly divulged a key part of that plan.

According to ESPN.com’s excellent Jeremy Fowler, the Steelers will be as physical as possible on Thursday night when it comes to covering Gronkowski.

Veteran safety Mike Mitchell said, “He has success when people don’t put their hands on him.”

I’m not sure what else the Steelers are planning on doing on Thursday night when it comes to stopping Gronkowski, but my guess is that they have a more sophisticated and balanced approach on tap, especially as compared to how they covered current Seattle Seahawks superstar TE Jimmy Graham, who is the NFL’s consensus No. 2 tight end, in Week 13 of the 2014 regular season when they lost 35-32 to the New Orleans Saints.

On the surface, the Steelers did an exceptional job of stopping Graham, because he didn’t even have a single target. Graham had 85 receptions during the entire 2014 season, and yet the Steelers were able to hold him catch-less.

But it wasn’t a job well-done by the Steelers defense, because not only did they lose this game, they allowed Drew Brees to torch them for five touchdowns, no picks, and a whopping 9.5 yards per target. All of the attention they put on Graham allowed standout deep threat Kenny Stills to blow up for a five-catch, 162-yard performance, though it is worth noting that nobody else on the team had more than 17 receiving yards.

That said, the Pittsburgh Steelers could afford to be more aggressive with targeting Gronk, mostly because the Pats don’t have an elite vertical threat like Stills. Aaron Dobson is completely unproven, and the Patriots second and third-best pass-catchers, Julian Edelman and Danny Amendola, are clearly possession guys.

Of course, while that can help the Steelers avoid being as vulnerable to deep passes over the top, it might not help them on Thursday since Edelman and Amendola can get open with ease and know what to do with the ball in their hands. Running backs Dion Lewis and Travaris Cadet are dangerous pass-catchers, and Brady will be able to use Scott Chandler‘s size and reliable mitts to his advantage.

Stopping Rob Gronkowski is by far priority No. 1 for Pittsburgh, but Brady is still in a great position on Thursday night against a pass defense that also struggled against running backs and wide receivers deeper on the depth chart last season, in addition to tight ends.

Playing Gronkowski tougher also doesn’t guarantee success on the defense’s part, because Gronk has shown that he has the size, catch radius, and quickness to avoid being marked out of games due to physical defenders. I’m sure the Steelers understand that there is no way to neutralize Gronk through just one tactic, so pressing him out of the game is highly unlikely to be the cure-all for a player who had less than 68 receiving yards just once in the final 12 games of the regular season.

Why did I cherry-pick the final 12? Well, the New England Patriots weren’t, uh, themselves in the first four weeks of the season, and Gronk also looked limited during the beginning of the season.

Since he’s not coming off of an injury and successfully played in all 19 regular season and postseason games in the 2014-15 season, we shouldn’t expect a slow start from him. This is a guy who averaged 5.1 receptions per game, 74.9 yards per game, and 0.75 touchdowns per game last season despite the slow start to the year. His receptions should move up closer to the triple digits than 80, and I could see him hauling in six passes for about 75 yards on Thursday, though I wonder if the Steelers physical approach will cause Chandler to vulture a TD from Gronk.

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