New England spent all spring building a defense around its shutdown tandem…and then, on the Friday before kickoff, Mike Vrabel confirmed the worst: All-Pro CB Christian Gonzalez is OUT for Week 1 vs. the Raiders . And now, it might just force Vrabel to change everything he had planned for Las Vegas, as remarked by The Athletic.

Yes, that lingering hamstring injury is just now going away. It started in July, and we’re still talking about it in September. And that puts Mike Vrabel’s plans in the air. Vrabel and the Patriots built their defense around a simple “cat coverage ” idea. Christian Gonzalez locks up one cat, big-ticket free-agent Carlton Davis III takes the other, and you line up to play grown-man football every snap. Vrabel even joked about it out loud in March, when he

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