FOXBORO -- Echoing what he said Monday during his appearance on Dennis & Callahan on WEEI, Tom Brady said there's "only one Rob Gronkowski" and the Patriots will have to make due. But on Tuesday, during his weekly press conference prior to the Jets Thursday night, Brady added that he hasn't spent any time worrying about the loss of his No. 1 target on the field.
"Honestly I've just been thinking about the Jets," Brady said. "I haven't been thinking about when he's coming back. He's not playing this week, so we've got to go out there and win without him. And there's a lot of guys that are capable of making plays for us, and that's where my attention is focused, on the guys that are going to try to help us win this game."
Brady said he'll be looking at Visanthe Shiancoe, Michael Hoomanawanui and Daniel Fells to pick up the slack. He did not mention Aaron Hernandez as a possibility. Hernandez has missed the last three games with a recurrence of his right ankle sprain from Sept. 16.
"Every player has some different strengths and so forth, and you try to play to those strengths," Brady said. "I don't think you go into [it] and say there's only one Rob Gronkowski, there's only one of those in the league. The guys that are going to be in there doing that role, Visanthe and Hooman and Daniel, they have to go in there and do the best that they can do. That's why they're on the team. That's why we have 53 guys on the roster, so everybody can contribute at one point or another."
Brady said he's not worried about others trying to pick up too much of the slack in Gronkowski's absence.
"I think everyone is just going to go out there and always try to do the best that we can do," Brady said. "I'm trying to do that, Wes [Welker] is trying to do that, everybody at every position is going to try to give it their best this week, that's what we all need to do."
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