Bill won’t have soft spot for Gronk
So it’s official now, sort of: The Patriots won’t be trading Rob Gronkowski after all.
For that, Gronk fans can thank the Pats for dealing Brandin Cooks and a fourth-round pick to the Los Angeles
Rams for a sixth-round pick and — ta da! — the
23rd overall pick in the upcoming draft.
Imagine: The Pats landed a first-round pick for Cooks, and only a secondround pick last year for quarterback-in-waiting Jimmy Garoppolo. While you’re mulling that, let’s mull the several days of hot takes holding that it would be Gronkowski who’d be traded. That’s probably off the table now.
But a nagging question remains: What if the Pats
did trade Gronk?
Put another way, what makes him so special?
That is, besides the fact he is so special.
We can all agree Gronk is a transcendent player, the standard by which all future tight ends will be measured, and that we might never see his kind again at Gillette Stadium. Or any other stadium.
Lots of professional athletes are tall and lean, and are a quadruple threat of powerful build, surprising speed, off-the-charts athleticism and an Einsteinian game awareness. They’re called basketball players.
Gronk’s a football player, a tight end; that he can do what he does while serving as every opposing player’s personal bull’s eye borders on the superhuman. To watch Gronk on television is to wonder if it’s all just Fake Views, with this or that eye-popping catch nothing more than the latest offering from the NFL’s Dept. of Computer-Generated Imagery.
So yes, he’s special. But not so special that the Patriots still won’t trade him at some point if they believe a.) he’s getting ever closer to the day when he’s D-O-N-E done, or b.) Bill Belichick decides he’s not worth the dough.
Forget all that “Patriot Way” nonsense. That’s just a bumper sticker. But there is a Bill Belichick Way, which isn’t much different than the Branch Rickey Way when it comes to player movement. The rumpled, legendary general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers practically invented the philosophy of trading a player a year too early rather than a year too late, and Belichick, as much historian as coach, has learned from the best.
This is where it gets complicated. If one assumes Gronk has one or two years of pure, Grade A Gronkness remaining, that coincides nicely with what most of us believe are the one or two years of greatness remaining in the Tom Brady bank account. Once levelheaded people get past the notion that Brady won’t be playing until age 45, the natural consolation prize is that ol’ No. 12 will play two more years. And those will be two splendid seasons, especially if he remains healthy with Gronkowski on the field and Gronk, too, is able to avoid the surgeon’s blade.
But while Brady has avoided serious injury since his doomed 2008 season, Gronkowski has played most of his career imitating the professional wrestler many people believe he’ll eventually become: He’s down! He’s up! He’s down! He’s up! He’s dead! No, wait, he’s alive!
Gronkowski doesn’t even turn 29 until next month, and at his position, and the way he plays that position, he’s not your average 29-year-old. How many 29-year-old dudes do you know who’ve had the litany of back issues Gronk’s been dealing with?
Like all pro sports bosses, Belichick places a dollar value on his personnel. But what he rarely does is get blinded by sentiment and nostalgia. Yes, he will always have fond memories of the 22-year-old Rob Gronkowski (17 receiving TDs, most in the NFL in 2011), but he can’t even be sure he’ll get last year’s 28-year-old Rob Gronkowski in 2018.
As for holding onto Gronk because he’s part of some kind of quarterback/ tight end package, or to keep Brady happy, sorry, it doesn’t work that way. Garoppolo was one thing; Brady wanted to keep playing, and so the kid had to go. (go = be given away.) But if you’re going to keep playing until 40 and beyond, you have to deal with the fact that a lot of old pals will be broomed out.
The Gronk we see is a cool guy. His public misadventures tend to be small potatoes, and his only truly bad on-field episode was when he went Full Marchand on Buffalo Bills cornerback Tre’Davious White last season. The graciousness he displayed the other day in visiting an ailing fan was heartwarming.
Absolutely, you’d like to see Gronk hang around a few more years. Belichick, no doubt, would like to see Gronk hang around a few more years. But only if the numbers work.
Players and fans can hope for Belichick to get warmer, fuzzier and have more fun, etc., but the business side of the guy is always going to be made of stone.
As it should be.