The first step to understanding Rob Gronkowski’s value as a football player would be to take the stat sheet, crumple it up and throw it in the trash.
That’s not to say Gronk have great numbers over his 11 NFL seasons. He had more touchdowns in a season (17) than any tight end ever has. His 15 career playoff touchdowns are also the best of all-time at his position, and he has the most 100-yard games (32) of any tight end, too. He had 92 touchdown catches in 143 career games, which was only bested by Antonio Gates (116 TDs in 236 games) and Tony Gonzalez (111 TDs in 270 games).
But to truly on Gronk, you have to look even closer, and to what he did to a defense that even greats like Gates and Gonzalez didn’t. And that is probably best illustrated by what happened when the Patriots or Buccaneers would break huddle.
Gronkowski could line up in-line and block like a tackle. He could be split out, or in the slot, and catch the ball like a receiver. So when he and his teammates walked to the line, the defense had a decision to make: Treat him like a receiver, and put a fifth defensive back on the field, and his team could put him with his hand in the dirt, and he could drive that corner or safety into the third row on a run call. Treat him like a lineman, and put a third linebacker on the field, and now he’s split out and that guy’s covering him.
In a nutshell, Gronkowski the player, on every play, could pose a question that had nothing but bad answers for a defense.
“People had to figure out how to defend us,” Alabama OC Bill O’Brien, his offensive coordinator in 2010 and ’11 in New England, said over text on Tuesday. “And on top of that, we were playing at a very fast tempo. If you played base, we could empty you out. If you played nickel, we could run or pass. If you played dime, we could run the ball.”
And with Gronk having announced his retirement on Tuesday afternoon, that probably best explains what makes him, at least at his peak (and we can have the longevity argument here, too), arguably the greatest tight end ever—and, for my money, the most impactful skill-position talent of his era, with four first-team All-Pro selections and four Super Bowl rings to show for it.
In a lot of ways, he was the realization of what Bill Belichick had thought the position could be in New England, after he’d worked with Mark Bavaro in New York as an assistant, and Ozzie Newsome in Cleveland in his first run as a head coach.
God knows Belichick tried to find Gronk before 2010. He spent a first-round pick in ’02 on Colorado’s Daniel Graham. He spent another first on Georgia’s Benjamin Watson two years after that, and third-round pick on Texas’s David Thomas two years after that. He signed veterans like Jermaine Wiggins and Christian Fauria. He even successfully moonlighted linebacker Mike Vrabel at the position.
Belichick did it because he believed that the tight end could be the ultimate queen on the chessboard, and the 2010 draft allowed him and O’Brien to prove it with Gronkowski and Aaron Hernandez first, and later with Gronkowski as a singular talent being deployed by Josh McDaniels, after O’Brien left for Penn State.
Playing the way Gronk did, to be sure, came with a physical cost. He broke his arm repeatedly, tore his ACL, suffered concussions and missed 29 games over nine years, a toll that drove him from the game in 2019. But his comeback proved again the impact he’d made, in that it was so important for the greatest player ever, Tom Brady, to have him aboard as Brady changed uniforms after 20 years in New England.
There, he’d score two touchdowns in another Super Bowl win, and show yet again how unique he was in that he was able to come back after a million injuries and a year off, and become a handful to deal with again.
“If not the best ever, [he’s] top three,” his coach in Tampa, Bruce Arians, texted. “Great blocker and receiver. Extremely hard worker. Always prepared to win.”
And if the call comes from Brady in November or December? My guess is he’d be prepared again. His agent, Drew Rosenhaus, told me Tuesday that he wouldn’t be surprised if Brady made that call, and Gronk took that call, four or five months from now. I don’t think any of us would be—and here’s hoping it does happen, so we get to watch him one more time.
But if this actually is it, then it’s pretty clear what we’ve already gotten to see.
“He was the best tight end I have ever been around,” O’Brien said. “He was an even better person. He was 6'7", 260 [pounds] with incredible athleticism. But on top of that, he brought a level of toughness to our whole team. He brought great energy to the building every single day. Gronk never had a bad day. He was an awesome guy to coach.”
And an awesome guy to watch over 11 years. As tight ends go, probably the best ever.
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