It’s been an eventful 24 hours in the AFC East, where the Dolphins fired their offensive coordinator and the Patriots lost their undefeated season, along with key players on both sides of the ball. We’ve got updates on those injuries sustained by New England players on Sunday night, so let’s dive in and round up the latest from out of the AFC East….
- As first reported late last night by Dianna Marie Russini of ESPN (Twitter link), Rob Gronkowski‘s knee injury isn’t believed to be as serious as it initially looked. Many reporters have since echoed that notion, with one source tells Adam Schefter of ESPN.com (Twitter link) that “we think he is going to be OK.” The star tight end still has to undergo tests today, but Ian Rapoport of NFL.com tweets that the Patriots don’t think there’s any structural damage to Gronkowski’s knee, and hope he won’t miss much time.
- On the defensive side, the early diagnosis for Patriots linebacker Dont’a Hightower is an MCL sprain, per Albert Breer of the NFL Network (Twitter link). If there’s no further damage to Hightower’s knee, that injury shouldn’t end the linebacker’s season, though he’d probably have to miss some time — a sprained MCL generally results in a recovery time of two to four weeks.
- An ESPN report on Sunday suggested that Quinton Coples was involved in an incident on the Jets‘ flight back from Houston last week, which was part of the reason for his release. However, Coples and Jets head coach Todd Bowles both denied that was the case, according to Brian Costello of the New York Post. “I don’t know where that came from,” Coples said. “Only thing is I didn’t fit with the defense.”
- Before this morning’s firing of Lazor, Armando Salguero of the Miami Herald wrote that the Dolphins are in trouble “from top to bottom,” calling this year’s team the worst for the franchise since 2007.
- In addition to the other changes to the Dolphins‘ coaching staff today, the club has also promoted Phil McGeoghan to wide receivers coach, according to the team (Twitter link).
As for the New England 1st loss, I would like to thank the refs and commissioner godell for showing how a game can be fixed without any the wiser . A lot of wired calls and bad flags cost an unbeaten team it’s due Thanks from a fan
Hightower would be a huge loss. He’s still immensely underrated, but he’s one of the best linebackers in the league. The Pats can’t afford to lose any more key players.