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Rob Gronkowski was supposed to be here for a while, not long. When he retired in 2019 at the age of 29 after winning his third Super Bowl, it looked good. Gronk had beaten defenses like no other player in NFL history when he was healthy, but he only managed to play 16 regular season games twice; it is difficult, after all, to maintain the joints and muscles of a kaiju. And he posted some of the worst numbers of his career in 2018. For someone who enjoys his time off the field as much as his time on it, retiring seemed reasonable. When Gronk left the NFL, he was tied for third all-time in touchdown receptions by a tight end and third all-time in Party Rocking, behind the guys at LMFAO. (Did you know they’re an uncle-nephew combo and not brothers, as you probably imagined? Savage.)
When Gronk came out of retirement to join the Buccaneers in 2020, I thought he was just good luck charm for Tom Brady as the GOAT adjusted to a new team for the first time in his career. The Bucs had a loaded receiving body with great options on the tight end, including 2017 first-round pick OJ Howard. In Tampa Bay’s first two games last season, Gronk had two catches for 11 yards. In September, he called himself a “blocking tight end.”
Before Howard fell with a season-ending Achilles injury last October, he had more targets, receptions and yards than Gronk. And while Gronk’s use increased after Howard’s injury, his per-game stats were still the worst since his rookie season, even lower than his last campaign in New England. He finished 2020 with 623 receiving yards; in 2013, when he missed nine games with a pair of injuries, he had 592.
But in the Bucs’ Super Bowl win over the Chiefs, Gronk caught six passes for 67 yards and two touchdowns. (It wouldn’t be a Super Bowl if Gronk hadn’t caught a touchdown pass from Brady.) It was a sign of things to come: Gronk scored two touchdowns in the two Tampa Bay games so far in the 2021 season. He leads the league in touchdowns and already has more (four) than he had in his last season with the Patriots (three). He again takes the defenders in involuntary movements to the end zone:
There is now no doubt who is the best tight end in Tampa Bay. Even though Howard is apparently in good health, he only played 17 total snaps in the team’s first two games, capturing an assist. The recently retired guy usurped the recent first-round pick.
I accepted that Brady will be a great quarterback for the rest of my life. There are some players we can tell our grandkids to watch, but not Brady, we’ll be watching him with our grandchildren. But Brady has always been clear that he wants to play forever. He submits to an eccentric personal health regimen that strictly regulates what goes into his body. No one has ever regulated what goes into their body less than Gronk. If you cut it, Red Bull and the vodka spill out.
Gronkowski’s greatness has long been defined by his physical dominance, but this faded as he got older. Someone with this style of play and this career arc should not be able to start a second first in their thirties. So how did he suddenly discover a four-flavor fountain of youth from Loko?
In two games, the 2021 Buccaneers have the most effective offensive on the goal line. They had the ball inside the opponent’s 5-yard line five times. They played five games, all of which were assists, and all of which resulted in touchdowns. Some teams go down to the goal line, place their biggest ball carrier behind three tight ends and a back, and throw him into the line of scrimmage on the first, second and third downs. The Bucs just have Brady throwing a pass for a touchdown.
Gronk was involved, scoring two of his four touchdowns on games that started inside the 5. Here’s one of those two, from the first game against the Cowboys. He blocks for several seconds before running to the goal line and catching a pass.
As a tight end, Gronk has always been able to score in goal-to-go situations. But his score is now different from what it was at the height of his Pats. Here’s Gronk scoring a touchdown on a Brady fade in 2015.
This is no longer Gronk’s job. If the Buccaneers want to score on a fade, they throw the ball to Mike Evans. Sounds a lot like Gronk, doesn’t it?
Gronkowski has become the preeminent tight end of the sport in a decade in which the sense of position has evolved, or perhaps disintegrated. In the early days of football, the term “tight end” was used in direct opposition to “split end,” the position which is now called wide receiver. The tight ends were aligned “tight” on the offensive line; the split ends were “split” in width. This distinction has held for years. As the game evolved, however, Tight Ends spent less time as a sixth blocker and more time snapping shots in roles typically held by wide receivers, sometimes in the lunge, sometimes. outside. Some “tight ends” seldom line up “tight”. Players like Travis Kelce, who hardly ever take snaps online, are only called tight ends because of their size. Let’s just call them Swole Receivers.
Gronk has been a key part of this change. The best player in the league when he was a rookie was Jason Witten. Three of the top five tight ends this season have taken at least 70 percent of their passes in a “tight” position; none took more than 70 quick passes. Thirteen tight ends took at least 100 instant passes in 2010 in which they stuck instead of following a route.
Compare that to last season, when nothing of the top five who received tight ends took over 55% of their passes online, and Kelce took 245 wide passes, 3.5 times more than any tight end a decade earlier. Only one tight end, Chris Herndon of the Jets, had at least 100 passing blocking snaps.
In 2015, Gronk became the first tight end in the PFF database to record at least 200 wide assists. In New England, he took over 50% of his line-up passes just once, as a rookie. The traditional value of tight ends is derived from their versatility; since they block and receive, their presence on the pitch offers no indication to the defenses if a run or pass is coming. While Gronk’s blocking ability has long been respected, his value has always come less from his versatility than from his combination of size, speed and strength. He was the ultimate clash nightmare, and the Pats exploited those clashes in midfield.
Teams that kept Gronk with a linebacker quickly discovered their linebacker was too slow, like the Seahawks in Super Bowl XLIX.
Teams guarding Gronk with a defensive back quickly discovered their defensive back was too small – just ask the Bills.
And in Tampa Bay, Gronk does none of that.
The Buccaneers don’t use Gronk as a wide receiver or line it up in the slot. They mainly use him as a traditional tight end, lined up just off the offensive line. In 2020, he took 82.3% of his passing shots online, the highest rate of his career with a huge margin. Just five years after breaking the record for “wide” snaps by a tight end, Gronk led the league in tight snaps tied to the line.
Of course, the Bucs don’t need Gronk to separate widely. They have a huge receiver to take advantage of the size gaps at Evans. They have a great slot machine option in Chris Godwin. Their third receiver is Antonio Brown, who, like Gronk, plays well in a different role than the one that earned him All-Pro status in the 2010s. The Patriots have never had such wide receiver depth. Few football teams have ever done it!
With spectacular receiving talent across the depth chart, the Bucs don’t need Gronk to reinvent position. They need the blocking and receiving versatility that teams have been looking for for decades. Even though Gronk has lost one step athletically, he’s still incredibly strong and has amazing hands, which means he can block and catch very well. It may also explain why Gronk dominated Howard in the tight Tampa Bay snaps, as Howard is a faster, leaner player who is best suited for a receiving role.
Gronk isn’t a “blocking tight end,” as he joked in last year’s presser. But it is more plausible than ever that it remains to block. During her wacky stint on this week’s Manning Brothers show, Monday night football, he gave real football information: when defenders feel like he’s about to block, it is much easier for him to score touchdowns. It was clear in one of his touchdowns against the Cowboys. Gronk was supposed to be on a regular route, but Brady recorded it in a delay route that he got stuck on before releasing it, as ESPN’s Dan Orlovsky pointed out:
Gronk might produce like old Gronk, but he doesn’t play like old Gronk. And that’s OK! That’s not what the Bucs ask him to do. There is no Four Loko fountain of youth, and there was no way that Gronk could continue to be an overwhelming athletic force for decades to come. But he can continue to fill in the statistics sheet. Party folks rarely age gracefully, but Gronk could get touchdowns up to 38 and Brady 50.
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