Rob Gronkowski won’t return to the Patriots this season despite plenty of speculation over whether the former All-Pro tight end would end his retirement to help old friend Tom Brady and New England’s sputtering offense.
The deadline for Gronk to rejoin the Patriots came and went this past Saturday without him racing to the rescue. He now can’t re-sign with the Patriots until after Super Bowl LIV, effectively ending the comeback chatter for at least a couple of months.
But that doesn’t mean the 30-year-old is just sitting around and rotting on his couch. In fact, Gronkowski, who has been doing some NFL analyst work for FOX Sports, explained Wednesday on 103.3 AMP Radio’s “The TJ Show” that he’s staying active in retirement.
“I always have to wake up with a motive,” Gronkowski said, as transcribed by WEEI.com. “I love getting my day going by moving my body. I actually have a trampoline, they call it a ‘Rebounder.’ The mini trampoline, you know what I am talking about? Not one of those big ones, a little one. The first thing I do, I do a couple of stretches to get my hips moving a bit, and I then I just jump up and down sometimes just to get my blood moving. … Get the energy rolling and that is what I need to do. I love to workout. I love to stay fit. Usually I start my day like that if I can’t get a workout in in the morning.”
Trampoline, huh? While that sounds like fun, Gronkowski acknowledged it’s not the only routine he considers when starting his mornings. Sometimes, a nice little nature walk will do the trick for the highly motivated future Hall of Famer.
“When I don’t do movement, when I don’t do my workouts, or any type of movement, what I also love is to just go for a walk in nature to start my day,” Gronkowski said, per WEEI.com. “I have a couple little different techniques, like it is either jumping on the trampoline, jumping jacks, go for a walk in nature, or go right into my workout. Depending on the day and depending on what I have, you just feel so much better, you feel so much more motivated and I feel like your mind is so much more clear when you do get that movement in the morning.”
The Patriots have received very little production from their tight ends this season — one of several issues facing New England’s offense — so it’s fair to assume they would have welcomed No. 87 back with open arms. But it simply wasn’t meant to be, paving the way for a few more trampoline jumps and a few more nature walks before Gronkowski perhaps reconsiders his stance on retirement ahead of the 2020 campaign.
