It’s April, but this ain’t no fool’s joke! The New England Patriots have traded tight end Rob Gronkowski to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The Patriots get a fourth-round draft pick. The Buccaneers receive Gronkowski and a seventh-round draft pick.
Gronkowski has passed a team physical and looks like his retirement will be over once the trade goes through and they eventually suit up for practice.
Bleacher Report suggests that the infamous tight end has one year left on his Patriots contract and he was set to be paid $10 million on that. Apparently Gronk “has been getting his body ready for a return to football, and that reuniting with Tom Brady was important.”
Someone who caught 79 touchdowns would say exactly that.
The one factor that works against Gronkowski is that he’s injury prone. When he’s not dominating and catching Brady touchdowns, then he’s likely injured. He’s 30 and missed 29 games over eight seasons, that’s basically two seasons spread out. However, he still managed the pro bowl five times, Super Bowl champ three times, first-team All-Pro four times. Top that off with 521 catches, 7,861 yards, and 79 touchdowns. Now imagine if he didn’t miss 29 games.
A glance at the stats accumulated with Tom Brady and Gronkowski shows why the pair belong together as they’ve generated quite a few touchdowns and landed themselves with some record making numbers in terms of touchdowns thrown by Tom Brady and his top targets. Gronk nearly doubles the amount of touchdowns caught by any of Brady’s other receivers, even Randy Moss.
From @ESPNStatsInfo: The 78 TD passes from Brady to Gronk are most in the NFL from 2010-18 and twice as many as Brady has thrown anyone else.
Most Rec TD from Tom Brady
Rob Gronkowski 78
Randy Moss 39
Julian Edelman 36
Wes Welker 34— Ed Werder (@WerderEdESPN) April 21, 2020