Nate Solder misses practice, but Logan Mankins is ready to fill his spot and even play tight end


That's right, Logan Mankins, the tight end.

Ok, maybe times haven't gotten that desperate quite yet, but the way things are going it'd be hard to say I'd be surprised if happened.

If the unthinkable does happen, Mankins sounds only half-confident.

NESN:
“I can catch, I don’t know if I could get open,” Mankins said smiling when asked if he can play tight end.

Still, while the star guard probably won't be going out on on routes this Sunday, he could be playing left tackle again.

Starting left tackle Nate Solder suffered his second concussion in eight days last Sunday and he missed practice today. That leaves his status in big doubt for this Sunday's game against the Ravens, and maybe longer.

When Solder left the game in the fourth quarter against the Dolphins, Logan Mankins surprisingly filled in for him.

It was surprising because the Patriots had another tackle, Will Svitek, who has just done an admirable job playing on the right side the past several weeks. Instead, the team elected to shift their entire left side, putting Mankins on Brady's blindside and undrafted rookie Josh Kline at left guard.

Surprising to us maybe, but not to Bill Belichick, who actually thought of Mankins as a potential left tackle when the team drafted him.

“Logan has a lot of versatility and certainly when we watched him at Fresno [State] it was all left tackle,” Belichick said. “I think there’s no question that he could have played left tackle in this league, played for us. But we had Light there, we put him into the lineup right away at left guard and he and Light played together for [six] years and then we got Solder and that was kind of the way it worked out. I don’t think there was ever a thought from the coaching staff or from myself that he couldn’t play left tackle. That’s wasn’t it. It was more, ‘We have a left tackle and he could play guard.’ Then the whole Light-Solder transition, we actually had two left tackles in ’11. As opposed to Light who we drafted as a left tackle, looked at him at right tackle and guard — two brilliant moves on my part — and then figured out that he was one of the better left tackles in the league for the next decade. I think it could have easily worked out that way with Logan had the circumstances been different. But that’s what it was.”

Very insightful stuff from Bill Belichick. Mankins certainly held his own protecting Brady's blind side, though he was obviously a but out of his comfort zone.

It’s a lot of different angles, going against faster guys,” Mankins said about the switch. “I’m used to the more powerful guys. Now I’ve got speed guys on the edge. It’s just something I had to get used to and learn on the fly on Sunday. It went pretty well, though. So, we’ll see. I don’t know what our plan is this week.”

That's just the kind of season this team is having. It's a next man up kind of year, and of course the lunchpail Mankins is up to the task.

Still, if the Patriots are heading into the playoffs (maybe) missing both their starting left tackle and starting right tackle, you can't say you'd love their chances going up against the dangerous defensive lines of, say, the Ravens, Chiefs, Broncos, Bengals or Colts. They won't get many breaks there.

Yet, this is the same team that was able to make it to a Super Bowl playing Julian Edelman at cornerback, so as KG would say, anything's possibbbbllleeeeeee.