TAMPA, Fla. – Rob Gronkowski, who opted to retire after the 2018 season due to injuries before returning to play with Tom Brady in Tampa Bay in 2020, said Monday that unlike the previous Super Bowl, when he’s struggling to walk for a month due to a thigh injury, he feels he could be back on the field right now.
“I feel like I could play another season right now if it started,” Gronkowski said. “I feel really good … I feel light. I feel flexible. I feel like I can just go out and play football and go out and it doesn’t hurt … to run trails and do what I have to do So, with I definitely feel ready to go, play another full season this year and take a year off at a time like this. “
Gronkowski, who will turn 32 in May, made it through his first full 16-game season in 2011 and played four postseason games. After a bit of a slow start, he returned to football and found his role in Bruce Arians’ offense about mid-season, then peaked in the postseason, matching the best personalities of the season. two touchdowns from Super Bowl LV.
“This year, just playing all 20 games, all 16 games in the regular season, there’s no shortage of training, no missing a game, nothing missing in the postseason – it was a great feeling,” Gronkowski said.
“It was just something I wanted to prove to myself, that I could do, to prove to myself that the things that I learned and took and changed – that I can play a full season, I can play a full post-season and at a high level. It’s generally wonderful to do that mission and now I feel like I can do it again. “
It was also important for Gronkowski to honor his contract, which he signed for six years and $ 54 million in 2012, which was added to his rookie business. This made Patriot until 2019, which is why Bucs had to deliver a fourth-round draft pick for his rights and a seventh-round pick in 2020.
Gronkowski said he will play on the offers for another year, assessing his body and general health at the end of each season, before deciding if he would like to continue. Would he have continued to play so many wounds if he had not been forced to close his deal with the Patriots?
“It’s a tough question, because I signed that at the age of 22, and when you sign something and you’re 22, you think you might like to run through a wall for the rest of your life,” Gronkowski said. you too understand the obstacles you will face when you are so young.
“But I’d say the contract didn’t really play a role either. There was no guaranteed money or anything like that, so I shouldn’t have played. I’d just say the contract didn’t have anything to do with it – I have he just wanted to play football. “
At the time, he worked hard and played hard. Like he liked to party. And while he still has it in him – as seen in the viral videos of him and his teammates sitting shirtless and drinking on the bow of a boat at the Bucs Super Bowl Boat Parade – he’s in a degree smaller now.
“Back in the day, when I was 20, I would expand [Super Bowl] holiday probably for about a month or two, “Gronkowski said.” I wouldn’t even know what was going on in the world. But you live and you learn. I’m 30 now, so [parade] it was enough for me “.