Will Rob Gronkowski retire after the Super Bowl? Here’s what Gronk and NFL experts have said about his NFL future.
After considering retirement from football at 19, Gronkowski once again ponders the question a decade later.
One member of the Patriots savored Super Bowl LIII’s “Opening Night” with conspicuous enthusiasm. Dancing, bantering and joking, Rob Gronkowski enjoyed himself among the multitude of media.
Gronkowski, a player seemingly incapable of subtlety, was unusually indirect regarding one question: His future in football.
“As of right now, those are the last things I’m thinking of,” Gronkowski told ESPN. “I love playing the game. After a long season, after the [Super Bowl], a few weeks down the road, you sit back, you relax, you get some downtime, enjoyment time. And you just see where you want to go with it.”
Asked a follow-up, Gronkowski elaborated.
“Like I said, I don’t know,” Gronkowski reiterated. “I haven’t done that sit-down yet. I’ve got to do that sit-down. About two weeks after [the season]. Then I’ll know.”
On the surface, it’s strange to think of Gronkowski contemplating retirement. At 29, he’s still in his theoretical prime as an athlete. And in his nine NFL seasons, he’s generated staggering numbers even while missing significant time due to injuries.
But it’s the injuries – including three back surgeries, four forearm surgeries, multiple concussions as well as a torn ACL and MCL – that have led to speculation about Gronkowski calling an early retirement from football. That, plus a decline in production in the 2018 season (47 catches for 682 yards and three touchdowns) led to pundits dismissing the tight end as not the same player he once was.
Yet for all of reports of his potential departure from the NFL, Gronkowski has continued to avoid directly answering questions about his future. The origin of the Gronkowski retirement talk began at another Super Bowl, almost exactly a year ago.
Before 2018
Prior to the postgame of Super Bowl LII, the Gronkowski retirement discussion was mostly limited to jokes about his favorite number, jokes about Tom Brady being old, and discussion of his latent professional wrestling ability.
One serious moment of contemplating retirement actually came for Gronkowski before anyone in New England even really knew who he was. While in college at Arizona, a back injury spurred a momentary thought.
“There was another option, though: I could retire and collect the $4 million insurance, tax-free, at the age of 19,” Gronkowski said in a 2015 interview. “But that would mean I couldn’t play football anymore. I did the calculations, and at four percent annual interest I could make $160,000 a year without touching the $4 million principal. But I didn’t want the easy money. I wanted to earn it, playing football.”
Gronkowski would work his way back from the college injury, and was selected by the Patriots in the second round (42nd overall) in 2010. He caught 10 touchdowns as a rookie, catapulting into a New England celebrity as he became one of the NFL’s premier tight ends.
Alongside the success was a continuation of injuries, however. After playing in all 16 regular season games during his first two NFL seasons, Gronkowski would miss 30 percent of regular season games from 2012-2016.
Super Bowl LII
In the immediate aftermath of the Super Bowl LII loss to the Eagles, Gronkowski first acknowledged the possibility that he was considering his future, and that it might not include playing football.
“I’m definitely going to look at my future, for sure, sit down in the next couple weeks, and see where I’m at,” said Gronkowski. “We fought all year long — all the receivers, running backs, lineman. We put all the work in together, so I’m just going to reflect on the season … We’ll see what happens.”
It didn’t take long for a wide-sweeping report on Gronkowski’s mindset to emerge. ESPN’s Jeff Darlington reported in mid-February that the Patriots tight end had been considering retirement long before his Super Bowl postgame answer.
“Weeks before [the AFC Championship game], Gronkowski was telling people around him the toll on his body was making him lean toward the potential that this was his last season,” Darlington said on SportsCenter. “This is a very serious thing for Gronkowski at this point. He will certainly continue to contemplate retirement.”
“It’s not a done deal by any means, but this is not something that is simply an emotional approach to the loss of the Super Bowl, nor is it an emotional response to the concussion,” Darlington continued. “This is something Gronkowski has been considering long before both of those instances in the 2017 season.”
The 2018 offseason
Following the Super Bowl, and continuing into April, Gronkowski left the team and the fans speculating about his future. Retirement talk continued, if only because Gronkowski didn’t deny it.
Also, he produced a flurry of cryptic tweets that only fueled discussion.
Forseee your own future, control your own temptations, and your destiny will be not just be reached, it will just be starting.
— Rob Gronkowski (@RobGronkowski) February 24, 2018
NBC Sports Boston’s Tom Curran reported in late February that Gronkowski hadn’t enjoyed the 2017 season, and had thought about walking away.
“He seriously considered stepping away from the game in training camp,” said Curran. “He had kind of had it. At that point his body wasn’t responding. He wanted to train a certain way. The team didn’t necessarily want him to train the way he wanted to train. They were at loggerheads. He was pissed.”
In early March, Gronkowski’s agent, Drew Rosenhaus, avoided answering the question of his client’s status for the 2018 season.
“You know, I’m not sure,” Rosenhaus told Pro Football Talk’s Mike Florio. “I got together with Rob after the season — and he and I have a great, great relationship — and he said to me, ‘It’s just gonna take some time.’ And that’s all we talked about when it came to football.”
By April, Darlington was back with another report that Gronkowski was “pretty certain” he would return for the next season, provided Brady was still the team’s quarterback.
Finally, on April 24 – one day after Brady’s agent, Don Yee, announced the quarterback would be back – Gronkowski announced on social media that he too would return.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bh-D0ToHtDb/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
An interesting subplot to Gronkowski’s meeting with Patriots coaches prior to his announced return was a historical “what if” scenario that would later emerge: New England almost traded Gronkowski to Detroit. The deal fell through when Gronkowski said he would refuse to report to any team he was traded to. He would only continue playing football with Brady and the Patriots, according to ESPN’s Adam Schefter.
The 2018 season and Super Bowl run
Gronkowski skipped the team’s voluntary workouts in May, noting in a July interview with Sports Illustrated that he wanted to “keep the body fresh and mentally and physically take a little break, off the body, off the mind.”
But upon his return, he noted that, “I am definitely ready to get back to football and play the game.”
Unsurprisingly, discussion of Gronkowski’s future persisted into the 2018 season.
“I think there’s a good chance he just walks away after this year unless the Patriots are willing to rip up the last year of that contract and give him some form of security that is not tied to being healthy and producing on the field,” posited Florio in November.
Curran also stated in November that he believed the remaining games in the season represented the “stretch run of Rob Gronkowski as a New England Patriot,” due to injuries and the tight end’s contract.
Gronkowski himself was more evasive of the question.
“I haven’t been thinking about that at all,” Gronkowski said of retirement in a December press conference. The 29-year-old reaffirmed that he was “all-in” on the season (and postseason) at hand.
On the morning before the Patriots defeated the Chargers in the AFC Divisional Round, NFL insider Ian Rapoport reported that Gronkowski would again be considering retirement at the end of the season.
“Some people close to him believe Gronkowski’s decision will go the other way,” Rapoport wrote.
A year after the speculation began, the reports on Gronkowski’s future continue. And with his unspecific answer on Super Bowl LIII “Opening Night,” it’s clear the four-time All-Pro is still leaving the door open to an exit from football.
