Today at Belichick's morning press conference was former long snapper Lonnie Paxton and his son. Lonnie is here to sign a one day contract and retire as a Patriot. I think his son was here to practice his rolling down a hill technique, future hall of famer if he keeps it up.
With the pads on and the temperature up, the practice was more competitive and chippy than last week. So chippy that Julian Edelman showed his WWE potential on Stephon Gilmore after taking exception to a play he made. As always, both players earned a walk of shame to the showers.
Perennial pro-bowler, Matthew Slater had several spectacular catches. One came on a play that it appeared McCourty was going to intercept. Instead, it was pretty much the best reception of the day. After practice I did get the opportunity to interview Slater so be sure and check back later for it.
A couple of times at practice I found myself checking to see who #47 on offense was. Assuming you don't have that number memorized yet and don't have a roster handy, it's Glenn Gronkowski. It will be interesting to see what happens on September 2nd when the rosters go down to 53. After earning the black jersey for practice squad player of the week multiple times last season, he may be ready to dress on Sundays this fall.
Besides Glenn, there are some other new guys to the Patriots whose numbers are pretty much ingrained into my brain...#88 James O'Shaughnessy (yes one of his nicknames is "oh shag Hennessy"....too bad his first name isn't Aaron. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, click here. The other number is a late addition to the team, #17 Tony Washington.
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