New England Patriots: 3 solutions at tight end post NFL Draft

The trade of Jacob Hollister has created an even bigger question mark for the New England Patriots tight end situation.

For nearly a decade the New England Patriots have had stellar tight end play. Ever since the drafting of Rob Gronkowski in 2010, the team has had one of the best players the position has ever seen.

Even when not fully healthy (which admittedly was few and far between the past few years), Gronkowski was still a matchup nightmare and someone that would keep defensive coordinators up at night.

However, the injuries finally caught up to Gronk. Although he developed into an elite blocker, he was clearly a shell of himself as a pass catcher. When needed he came out and made an excellent play, but it was clear for his own good he had to walk away.

Unfortunately, because of this, it means that the New England Patriots really don’t have a successor at tight end.

Patriots fans will flock to comment sections and will say “well, we have won without Gronk plenty, there is nothing to worry about”. This is, of course, true, the Patriots have won more than 75 percent of their games without Rob Gronkowski, but that is in large part due to the excellent backup plans.

Aside from a few spot starters, when Gronk has missed more than 5 games in a season his backups have been:  Martellus Bennett and Michael Hoomanawanui. Martellus Bennett isn’t Gronk, but he was still in the upper echelon of players at the position, which means that there was not a tremendous drop-off.

Hoomanawnui brings much less to the table, and it showed. He did barely anything in Gronk’s absence in 2013, and the offense looked pedestrian on route to an embarrassing AFC Championship Game loss in Denver.

The point is, the New England Patriots have had a direct correlation between elite/above average tight end play and their success. There are ways to fix this though that is relatively cost-efficient.

Here are three ways to fix the Patriots hole at tight end.