Goodnight Sweet Gronky

It’s hard not to sit here and try to write about Rob Gronkowski’s career without a big fat smile on my face. The Patriots selected him just a couple weeks after I focused all my three-years-of-blogging energy into my own site, PatsPropaganda. So Gronk has very much been a main character here for almost nine years.

From that very first glimpse of him, it was clear that Patriots football just got a whole lot more fun. Little did we know we were about to witness perhaps the most spectacular career the NFL has ever seen from a tight end.

Gronk would play just nine seasons, with injuries marring significant games of the 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2016 seasons. But among the rest he put together an easy Hall of Fame career with three Super Bowl rings.

Let’s take a look back at nearly a decade of Gronk spikes.

When the Patriots jumped the Ravens to select Rob Gronkowski 42nd overall, it was an immediate preview of what was to come. All of the Gronkowski’s took to the stage as Rob threw on the Patriots helmet and started headbanging like he was ready to get to started tomorrow.

2010-2011: The Coming Out Party

At the end of the 2009 season, the Patriots were just beginning to rebuild from the dynasty defense and electrics of Moss/Welker. The entire team needed a boost of life and that’s what Rob Gronkowski gave them immediately.

His first huge game came against the Steelers in Week 9, catching three touchdowns on five catches for 72 yards. Gronk would haunt the Steelers his entire career.

Gronk looked like a rookie at times, especially in a shocking road loss in Cleveland, but the dominance was apparent from the first preseason game when he dragged James Laurinaitis with one leg.

Despite 10 TD catches as a rookie, Gronk had just four catches for 65 yards and no touchdowns in the disappointing playoff loss to the Jets. What was clear was that Gronkowski was going to be an offensive focal point with Aaron Hernandez.

In 2011, Gronk exploded with five touchdowns in the first three games. Later in the season he’d post ten touchdowns in six games, finishing the year with a career-best 17 touchdowns. But the defining moment of that season for Gronk and the Patriots came when Bernard Pollard flew into his legs while attempting to tackle him late in the third quarter.

Gronk returned at the end of the game and was celebrating on the field with his teammates, but it cast an ominous shadow over the two-week buildup to Super Bowl 46.

He was in a walking boot after the Patriots’ plane touched down in Indy and made the rounds and media day but the question remained, how effective would he be?

He was a critical piece to the offense without question. They were good with the efficient running of Benjarvus Green-Ellis, the quickness of Wes Welker and Deion Branch and open field elusiveness of Aaron Hernandez, but Gronk made it all unstoppable.

It didn’t take long for everyone, including the Giants, to figure out that Gronk was just a decoy in Super Bowl 46, grabbing just two catches for 26 yards and being a few inches too short on the final Hail Mary.

Not having a full Gronk for Super Bowl 46 will always be one of the great “what-if’s” of the Patriots dynasty. He was just an unstoppable touchdown-catching-then-spiking machine that season and could’ve easily tipped the balances toward New England.

This surgery-requiring high ankle sprain was just the start of a career of injury battles for the tight end.

2012-2013: Broken Gronk

The disappointment of 2011’s ending still set the stage for another year of Gronkowski and Hernandez and the Patriots took it to a new level in 2012. The offense started running more no huddle and it tore defenses apart. It was the year of the one-word playcall and the two tight ends led the way.

Gronk started the first 10 games of the year looking like the same pre-ankle-sprain Gronk of 2011. He had 10 touchdowns and seven in his last four games as he took the field to block on what would be the Patriots’ 52nd point of a blowout of the Colts.

Former Patriot Sergio Brown still must’ve thought it was a game because he came screaming in and somehow managed to break Gronk’s forearm. A freak play in a blowout would that alter the course of Gronkowski’s career.

Gronk would return for the season finale six weeks later and catch a touchdown while donning a brace on his left arm, soon to be an expanded fixture for the rest of his career.

In the divisional round against Houston, Gronk leaped for his first target in the game and came down right on the arm, re-breaking it. For the third time in four years, a major injury abruptly changed the Patriots season in January.

The Patriots would lose to the Ravens a week later, severely missing Gronk’s size and toughness up front.

The offense would go under major turnover in 2013, parting ways with Wes Welker, Aaron Hernandez and Deion Branch, and turning things over to Julian Edelman, Danny Amendola and a rotating cast of others including Kenbrell Thompkins and Aaron Dobson.

At first it seemed that with the full offseason, Gronk’s broken forearm would not be an issue in 2013. But then came news of another surgery to fight an infection and then a fourth surgery to put in a plate.

Then in June, it was another back surgery, something he’d avoided since college. It seemed like injuries were going to derail a Hall of Fame start to his career. Starting the season on PUP, he’d finally get back on the field against the Jets in Week 7 of 2013, receiving 17(!) targets in a 30-27 loss.

Gronk started to pick up steam, posting 142 yards against the Steelers and 127 against the Texans in a four-game touchdown streak. But then TJ Ward went low and blew out Gronk’s knee in one of the most gruesome injuries we’ve ever had to endure to a Patriots.

After already having four surgeries Gronk that year, Gronk was now headed to a brand new injury and one of the hardest to come back from, an ACL tear. It was too much. Especially for such a lovable player.

If Gronk had retired in spring of 2014 would anyone have faulted him? I felt terrible for him. No one should have to undergo that many surgeries for our entertainment, but there Gronk was, grinning through all of it, somehow never letting the injuries sullen him or bring any sense of cynicism to his big goof persona.

By the start of the 2014 season we were wondering if we’d ever see the same Gronk again. If he could ever survive an entire season much less a Super Bowl-winning career.

That was when Gronk cemented his Hall of Fame Candidacy with an ending worthy of his start.

2014-2018: Culmination

Gronk would only sit for rest in the final game of the season, turning in his first healthy campaign since 2011. The Patriots eased him back in, but by the playoffs he was back to the peak Gronk.

Through the first two rounds he had 10 catches for 136 yards and two touchdowns. In the Super Bowl, his first half touchdown was a big-stage highlight touchdown that would cap a resurgent year.

Gronk would raise his first Super Bowl trophy and it felt almost as well-deserved for him as it did for Brady and Belichick. After multiple surgeries on multiple body parts, Gronk helped lead the way to where his potential of 2010 and 2011 seemed destined for.

2015 got off to a dominant Patriots start. At 10-0 the entered Denver flying high and Gronk was healthy with 51 catches and eight touchdowns. Then a Darian Stewart helmet to the knee left Gronk writhing in misery and the rest of us thinking that the major injuries had once again caught our big tight end.

But in one of the most miraculous twists of his career, Gronk would miss just a week and return to lead the Patriots near-miraculous last drive in Denver, grabbing a last second touchdown and nearly grabbing an overtime-forcing two-point conversion.

Injuries struck again in 2016, first when an Earl Thomas hit caused a pulmonary contusion. Gronk missed just one game. Then, his season ended two weeks later on a seemingly harmless incompletion in Week 12. A herniated disk and another back surgery. We were on borrowed time with Gronk and we all knew it.

2017, without Julian Edelman, more pressure was on Gronk to deliver. He battled minor injuries, including a concussion in the AFC Championship, but put up the fourth-best receiving stats of his career. In Super Bowl 52’s loss he had two touchdowns on nine catches for 116 yards. It was a remarkable effort in a season where there were rumors of his dissatisfaction behind the scenes.

There were questions if Gronk would return in 2018 but he did and none of the drama of 2017 seemed to follow. He played every game, but for the first time had a stretch mid-season where it seemed like he was fading for the first time in his career.

He had a couple dominant games, 7/123 and a TD in the season-opener vs. Houston, 8/107 with two TDs in the Miami Miracle loss, but he was also missing in action for games. He didn’t record a catch against Buffalo, a team he had historically owned.

But in the playoffs, Gronk was Gronk. It didn’t result in any playoff touchdowns, but he was integral in blocking for a running game that led them to the Lombardi.

Gronk’s playoffs culminatied with the offensive play that essentially decided Super Bowl 53. A diving catch at the goalline in between three defenders. Vintage Gronk.

Every snap he played from 2014 on felt like a gift and it could not have ended more perfectly for the Gronk. He sacrificed his body, made a big impact off the field and in the community and will be missed by teammates, coaches, fans and opponents alike.

I’d say haters too but Gronk is one of the few who doesn’t have any. That’s why he will be most missed.