How will Josh Gordon react to Bill Belichick and the Patriot Way?
That’s been the prevailing question ever since the New England Patriots acquired the talented but troubled receiver in a trade with the Cleveland Browns on Monday.
Gordon, who led the NFL in receiving in 2013, has played in just 11 of his last 65 possible games due to a number of suspensions stemming from his problems with substance abuse.
The 27-year-old likely is running out of chances to live up to his lofty potential, but one of Gordon’s friends and former teammates, Andrew Hawkins, thinks the football-first attitude in Foxboro, Mass. is just what Gordon needs.
“From what I know about New England, it’s a good place for him,” Hawkins told Chris Gasper of The Boston Globe. “The culture is all about winning football games. It’s a culture where you come in early and leave late. It’s a culture where you get in the playbook, and it’s, ‘We all have a job to do.’ That’s dependent on your talent level.
“Josh Gordon is capable of literally almost anything from the wide receiver position. When you put a guy like that with the best quarterback in NFL history, there is the potential for fireworks. I think Josh a lot of times is a person who is a product of his environment, and putting him in an environment like New England, where it’s ball all the time, I think that could be a really good situation for him.”
Hawkins signed with the Patriots prior to the 2017 season, but the veteran wideout elected to retire before the start of training camp. He spent three seasons with the Browns as Gordon’s teammate, and he believes the Baylor product is focused on making the most of his football career.
Gordon joins a long list of talented receivers the Patriots have given refuge to, but very few of them have had a measure of success in New England’s complicated system. But Hawkins thinks Gordon is different.
“Here is why Josh Gordon’s situation is different than anybody who has come through New England: With the exception of one person, talent-wise he is better than everybody else,” Hawkins said. “I don’t say that lightly.
“He does things that most people even by NFL standards cannot do. You can go through the list of guys in New England. It’s not a knock. These are people who put hard work and effort on the line and got incredible results. But if I’m talking raw talent and ability and run as fast as you can and sustain that and be at a speed faster than the guy in front of you and seven out of 10 times catch a 50-yard bomb if the throw is there, then there was Randy Moss in New England and Josh Gordon.
“Regardless of his football IQ — and he has a good football IQ — with the baseline of being able to simply run by you and catch a football, the ability to catch a deep ball 70 percent of the time if he has a quarterback who has the arm power to do, which he does, that automatically makes the Patriots offense better. Automatically, he is a benefit.”
That’s what the Patriots are banking on.
