The Patriots had an embarrassment of riches at tight end, just like they had a Pro Bowler with a healthy right ankle and an All-Pro with a good left forearm. 

Now, with Aaron Hernandez having played just twice since Week 2 due to his ankle and Rob Gronkowski out four to eight weeks with a broken forearm, the Patriots might be thinner at tight end -- a position with which Bill Belichick has long been fascinated -- than they have been in years. 

Counting Hernandez as out for now, the Patriots have three healthy tight ends on the roster in Daniel Fells, Visanthe Shiancoe and Michael Hoomanawanui. None of them are household names, none have their jerseys for sale at the Patriots’ Pro Shop, and none can say they have caught more than one pass from Tom Brady in a game before. 

In three combined seasons, Gronkowski and Hernandez have totaled 13 100-yard performances in the passing game during the regular season (nine for Gronkowski; four for Hernandez). In 17 combined seasons between Fells, Shiancoe and Hoomanawanui, the Patriots’ current healthy tight ends have a grand total of one 100-yard receiving performance, which came when Shiancoe caught seven passes from Tarvaris Jackson with the Vikings for 136 yards in Week 16 of the 2008 season. 

Shiancoe made his Patriots debut last Sunday against the Bills after beginning the season on injured reserve with the designation to return. Shiancoe’s time on the field was limited and he was not targeted once. Fells, who has bounced around a bit since coming into the league with the Buccaneers as an undrafted free agent in 2006, has two catches this season, with his 35-yard catch to put the Pats in the red zone in the third quarter against the Seahawks the more memorable of the two. Hoomanawanui, meanwhile, has two catches this season for 22 yards. 

Because they had Gronkowski (among other targets), the Patriots offense has been able to get along fine without Hernandez in the games he’s missed since he injured his ankle against the Cardinals. The Pats have gone 5-1 in those games, while Brady has thrown for over 300 yards in four of those six contests. The sample size for how the Pats have fared without Gronkowski is much smaller, however, making it a bit more difficult to gauge how the Pats offense will operate without the record-setting tight end. 

Considering injury concerns were a major reason as to why he wasn’t the top-rated tight end in his draft class (Gronkowski missed his junior year with back surgery before declaring for the 2010 draft), it is pretty remarkable to note that Thursday night’s game against the Jets will be the first game Gronkowski has missed in his NFL career. 

The game in which Gronkowski was most limited came in last season’s Super Bowl, when a high ankle sprain suffered late in the AFC championship made the big tight end a less viable option against the Giants. In that game, in which Gronkowski was limited to just two catches for 26 yards on three targets, Hernandez led the way with eight catches for 67 yards and a touchdown. His 14 targets from Brady were six more than the next guy in Welker. 

Now certain to be without Gronkowski for a prolonged stretch and unsure of what they have as far as Hernandez’s ability, the options are more limited. Using the likes of Fells, Shiancoe and Hoomanawanui, perhaps the Patriots can get from their current tight ends what they got from the duo of Benjamin Watson and Chris Baker in 2009 -- which wasn’t much. 

In the season before the Pats brought on Gronkowski and Hernandez, Watson led the way for Pats tight ends with 29 receptions for 404 yards and five touchdowns. Baker had 14 catches for 102 yards and two touchdowns, meaning the tight end position produced 506 receiving yards and seven touchdowns. For the sake of comparison, Gronkowski alone did more than that (592 receiving yards, eight touchdowns) in his last seven games this season. 

Of course, the offense doesn’t need to revolve around the tight end, as few offenses in the league boast true star power at the positon. It was easy for the Patriots to get by in that 2009 season without major tight end production thanks to a couple of guys named Welker and Moss. While Wes Welker hasn’t gone anywhere, Gronkowski’s presence in the offense has forced Brady to share the wealth a bit more.

Through his first 10 games of the 2009 season (he missed Weeks 2 and 3), Welker was targeted 122 times and had just one game in which he was thrown to less than 10 times (in that game, he was targeted nine times). Through 10 games this season, Welker has been targeted 105 times and has been thrown to less than 10 times in three contests. Gronkowski is second on the Pats with 75 targets. While the difference hasn’t been drastic, perhaps the void left by Gronkowski’s injury will mean more targets for Welker. Brandon Lloyd has caught just 56 percent of the balls thrown his way (71 percent for Gronkowski and 69 percent for Welker), but he could also be more heavily targeted over the final weeks of the regular season. 

Then there's the possibility of throwing more to Schiancoe and Fells. Shiancoe had 70 or more targets in his final three seasons with the Vikings, while Fells' career-high in targets came in 2010, when he was thrown to 65 times with the Rams. Hoomanawanui has never been much of a major force in the passing game in his career. 

When the Patriots began the season with their pair of young Pro Bowl tight ends, they probably weren’t envisioning the scenario in which they currently find themselves. They have the bodies to replace them for now, but the future -- at least, unless or until Hernandez returns to health -- figures to hold a stretch of traditional tight end production that has been rare around these parts for the last three years.