What we learned: Offensive inconsistency plaguing Patriots – WEEI | Christopher Price

History tells us that the Patriots have these relatively early speedbumps every year. In 2010, it was a November nightmare in Cleveland that busted up a five-game winning streak … and ultimately served as the last regular-season loss of the year for New England. In 2011, there was the weird choke job in Buffalo against a Bills team that finished the year 6-10. And after four games in 2012, the Patriots were 2-2. (And 3-3 after six games.) All of them turned out to be lessons learned in the maturation of a team that would eventually play into (at least) mid-January and sometimes beyond. Going forward, there’s some reason for optimism: Gronkowski should return either this week or next, Vereen will now be back in the lineup sooner rather than later and Amendola should be back at full strength. With the strides that the defense has taken – and, other than the Broncos, the wide-open nature of the AFC – there’s certainly reason to believe that if New England gets anything at all offensively, it will be in the upper tier of the AFC.