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It seems like Bill Belichick and the Patriots got tired of Rob Gronkowski’s offseason antics and were very serious about trading him. According to MMQB’s Albert Breer, the Patriots spoke to a a few teams “they trust” about moving the superstar tight end.
Via NESN
don’t think they were shopping Gronk to the entire league, but there were some teams they trust that I know they talked to. Detroit, Tennessee, Houston, San Francisco — you guys can make the connections there,”
Breer went on to elaborate that Gronk’s bizarre SuperCross press conference where he said that “he was too busy dirt-biking to attend Pats’ workouts’ pissed off Belichick and that’s when the team started talking about moving him. Gronk was eventually able to smooth things out with Belichick when he assured the Pats head coach that he was ready to commit to the team this season.
Gronkowski’s xplanation for why he wasn’t at last week’s workouts: “Training for this dirt-biking.” pic.twitter.com/MPOiGUFG1J
— Phil Perry (@PhilAPerry) April 21, 2018
This kind of came to a point where he sort of disengaged from the program and asked for a raise,” ” … there was this bizarre press conference before that monster rally that Gronk had. That sort of served as the ‘All right, we need to get him in here now and need a sit-down talk with him because this can’t keep going the way it’s going.’
“So Bill has Gronk in, and at that point, Bill had some discussions about trading him and Gronk sat down with Bill and all indications I got was that Gronk basically affirmed to Bill he wants to be a Patriot. That’s when they decided ‘OK, we’re gonna try to work out contract terms and go forward with this thing,” but there was a come to Jesus moment.”
The Patriots would have been hard-pressed to get a good return for Gronk who is a centerpiece of their offense. Thankfully for Pats fans Gronk and Belichick were able to set aside their differences and the team will be better for it.