Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski's left ankle injury Sunday ranked high on the gruesome scale, but he has appeared to avoid serious damage.
Gronkowski told NESN.com on Sunday night he was "fine" and he'll "be ready" to go for the Super Bowl. Yet, he left Gillette Stadium in a walking boot.
At any rate, Patriots head coach Bill Belichick was asked Tuesday about Gronkowski's injury.
"We'll see how it goes with Rob and some of the other players that are getting treatment," Belichick said. "We'll just see how it is when we get back out on the field. We haven't practiced, obviously, in the last couple days. We'll just see how all that is when it's time to go. It's hard to gauge injuries. We've seen some of the biggest hits in the game, and both guys get up and go back to the huddle like it's not any big thing. Then we've seen other plays that looked [like] a lot less contact or less impact, and because of the angle, or the way it happened or whatever caused the problem that it was more serious."
"It's just hard. I don't know how to really comment on that. You see plays that look like somebody is a little slow getting up off that, and then you see other plays that don't look like it should be that big of a problem, but something happened, players have some type of injury. So it's hard to rank them that way because they just don't turn out the way that they look. We've got a lot of tough players on our team. Everybody is going to do all they can to be ready physically and mentally, but especially physically to try to compete in the game."
The Patriots will practice Thursday and Friday, and Saturday's schedule is still up in the air. The team will release injury reports after each practice.
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