New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick addressed tight end Rob Gronkowski's ankle injury during a conference call on Monday, telling reporters it can be difficult to judge the severity of an injury based on how it initially looks.
Belichick did not specifically mention whether he felt Gronkowski would be entirely healthy by the Super Bowl, but noted that he expects his entire team will do whatever it can to prepare for the New York Giants. (via ESPN)
"Well, we'll see how it goes with Rob and some of the other players that are getting treatment when we get back out on the field. We haven't practiced, obviously, in the last couple of days. We'll just see how all that is when it's time to go. ... As you know, it's hard to gauge injuries. We've seen some of the biggest hits in the game and guys get up and back to the huddle all right, and it's not any big thing. And we've seen other plays that look a lot less contact, or less impact, and because of the angle or the way it happened, or whatever caused the problem, it's more serious. It's just hard. I just don't know how to really comment on that. We see plays that look like, 'Gee, I'm surprised somebody isn't a little slow getting up off that' and you see other plays that don't look like it should be that big of a problem but something happened and players have some type of injury. So it's hard to rank them that way, because they just don't turn out the way they look. We have a lot of tough players on our team. I think everybody is going to do all they can to be ready, physically and mentally, especially physically, to try to compete in the game."
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