Well it does of course depend on how healthy Gronk really is. There’s option A where they just use him in the red zone and on third down primarily and he should of course really help in those areas and thus have a significant impact.
But let’s talk more about option B because it’s a lot more tantalizing and that assumes Gronk is close to 100%, or at least able to be effective with his run blocking.
If that’s the case look out because the Pats will finally have all their pieces in place to run the offense they spent the whole offseason planning on running. See my previous post for more on that.
But if the Texans try to play their base defense again vs. the two TE set it really sets up well for the Pats because then they can go spread offense on them and Gronk won’t even have to worry about a heavy blocking role. The Texans ILBs struggle in coverage and regardless of how healthy Gronk’s wing is he’ll be able to help exploit them even more than the last time the teams played.