The "will he or won't he" speculation regarding Tight End Rob Gronkowski's rumored retirement took several twists past few weeks, when in-the-know NFL reporter Ian Rappaport tweeted that the monstrous man-child would play in 2018, and then Gronkowski's agent said not so fast - but in truth, there was no way that Gronkowski was going to retire no matter how ambiguous his own cryptic tweets made the situation seem.
Actually, Gronkowski's possible retirement, were there any real foundation to it, waxes nostalgic in one sense, as it compares to Barry Sanders' sudden retirement from football in 1998.
After the 1998 season, Sanders announced via correspondence to his hometown newspaper that he was retiring after ten seasons with the Detroit Lions, leaving behind millions in salary and a big mess for the powers-that-be in the National Football League, who were forced to bring in an arbitrator to rule on a Lions' demand of the repayment of part of his signing bonus.
Sanders offered to pay back the $5.5 million of the bonus which he had already received after signing a six-year contract a couple of years earlier, the lone stipulation being that Detroit grant him a release from his contract - and when the Lions refused, the league brought in the arbitrator and Detroit got back it's signing bonus, spread out over three years and Sanders remained retired.
It's impossible to know just how much Sanders had left in his tank, but it was obvious from his request to be released from his contract that he felt he had more to offer football, and was, in fact, a mere 1500 yards short of the all-time record for rushing yards in a career - which he could have surpassed with an average season (for him) on the ground.
But Sanders had often been heard saying that he was more concerned about his life after football than in setting records, and having been fortunate to have not suffered major injury in his career, he left the game as healthy as any 10-year veteran could.
The same can not be said about Gronkowski.
Having missed his entire junior season at the University of Arizona due to back surgery, and skipped his senior season to make himself available for the NFL draft, where all 32 teams initially passed on him in the first round because of the medical red flags and despite his obvious upside, and when he was still available on the 10th pick of the 2010 draft...
...and with the Baltimore Ravens poised to take him at number 11, Patriots' general manager Bill Belichick leapfrogged the Ravens, trading a sixth rounder to Oakland to move up and select Gronkowski. But after two superlative seasons that saw him win Rookie of the Week honors twice in 2010 and become an All Pro in 2011, his medical past came back to haunt him...and the Patriots.
In the 2011 AFC Championship game versus the Ravens, Gronkowski suffered a high ankle sprain and strained ligaments which hindered him in Super Bowl XLVI and required surgery in the offseason to repair - then late in 2012 he suffered a broken forearm against the Indianapolis Colts, but tried to come back for the playoffs, where he suffered a break on the not-fully-healed forearm.
After four surgeries and one infection on the forearm and a minor cleaning out procedure on his back, Gronkowski was able to return midway through the 2013 season, only to suffer a torn ACL and MCL, plus a concussion on a vicious hit from Cleveland Browns' safety T.J. Ward - but was bale to return in 2014 and play well enough to earn All Pro status for the third time and to win the Comeback Player of the Year award.
He played relatively injury-free football in 2015 and for most of 2015, before suffering a pulmonary contusion against the Seattle Seahawks which caused him to miss one game, only to suffer a herniated disc in his back the following week against the New York Jets, which ended his season - but in 2017 he came back from the procedure at full strength to earn his fifth nomination to the All Pro team, but suffered another concussion in the AFC Championship game against the Jacksonville Jaguars.
Many assumed that it was his injury history taking a toll on him that prompted his talk of retirement, but lately the talk has been centered around Belichick's supposed feud with Tom Brady's personal trainer, Alex Guerrero, whom Gronkowski sought out last offseason and whom he credits for sustained flexibility and overall wellness.
So significant were the results of his training regimen with Guerrero, that other Patriots players started looking into what is known universally as the "TB12 Method" - and chatter is that Gronkowski felt disrespected because the team wanted him to train a certain way, and his body wasn't responding the way it had training under Guerrero.
The result, of course, was that Belichick suddenly had enough of Guerrero being a fly in his ointment, reportedly since 2015 when several of his training staff reported to Belichick that Guerrero's alternative methods were clashing with the regimen set forth by the often-times feisty head ball coach - and two years later when his prize tight end bulldog started making waves about not being allowed to train the way he wanted to, Belichick banned Guerrero from the locker room and the sidelines during games.
Of course, as far as any of us are concerned, that is all speculation, but it does feed into the air that surrounds Gronkowski's attitude, and the assertion of a Providence Journal columnist that the Patriots attempted to stop an article about the dietary changes he struggled to make to fall closer in line to the diet that Brady swears by.
Obviously, there are egos to be massaged here. Belichick runs his team the way he runs his team, and experiences some measure of aggravation when people try to test him on that count - so Brady has to be a constant strain on him, particularly since he told his staffers in 2015 that his hands were tied because of Brady's special status on the team.
For that, he can probably thank owner Bob Kraft, who considers Brady family.
While it's not good to give one player special status and expect the other members of the team to follow the prescribed regimen, whatever Brady is doing is working for him, and since the theory behind Guerrero's is "Prehab, not rehab", meaning to train in order to avoid injury, of course the oft-injured Gronkowski is going to hop on board.
There's no easy solution to this. Brady has his status, and that seems to be the bitch-kitty here. As long as Brady plays, the issue with Guerrero will exist.
Perhaps that is why there was such a stink at the trade deadline when Belichick traded heir-apparent Jimmy Garoppolo to the 49ers for second round draft capital instead of keeping him and having the fate of the entire organization resting a little easier - and as an ironic sidebar, there have been reports that Brady is planning on taking his retirement year-to-year...
...meaning that if Brady retires after the 2018 season, the quarterback position is not well-accounted for, and the trading of Garoppolo would then seem like an epic gaffe - and if the team had known this all along, Garoppolo would have been franchised, even at the expense of the salary cap, for the greater, long-term good.
He would also still have Gronkowski to contend with and would likely have to trade him or let him walk into free agency or into retirement at the end of the 2019 season to make the rift between Belichick and Guerrero go away.
But if Gronkowski is serious about hanging up his cleats, his circumstance is similar to the aforementioned Sanders in that he is the unquestioned best player at his position in the prime of his career, still under contract, and within reach of several NFL records for a tight end - and like Sanders, is already considered among the best to ever play the game and is most likely in line for a gold jacket.
But Gronkowski hasn't asked for his release and wouldn't receive it, anyway, because whether being released or retired, there would be some pretty severe financial considerations to attend to.
The first being that Gronkowski is slated to be the highest paid tight end in the league this season, with or without any incremental bonus structures like we saw with him last season, which would render moot any chatter about wanting to be the highest paid player at the position - not that we've heard any of that kind of talk from the Gronkowski camp...
...nor have we heard, well, anything from Gronkowski except for assorted cryptic hashtags on social media - though beat writers around New England are opining that Gronkowski's issues were more along the internal workings of the ball club line than anything health related, with one writer going so far as to say that there needed to be a clearing of the air among the power structure at One Patriot Place, while another opining that the Patriots should deal off Gronk to the highest bidder.
Indeed, clear the air - but that has already occurred and Belichick knows just where he stands in all of this and whatever happens with Gronkowski is going to be by Belichick's hand, not Kraft's and certainly not Gronkowski's, because there is a $4 million dead money hit to the salary cap whether he trades him or Gronkowski retires.
It could get ugly, and that would be a shame.
It doesn't have to, though. If Belichick could see that Gronkowski is committed to do for his body in order to be a healthier, better player, and if Gronkowski could stop antagonizing him with his childishly clandestine tweets, and if Bob Kraft could just stay in his office and leave the team to Belichick, it won't get ugly.
But given the egos involved, that's probably not going to happen. Good thing there's enough talent on the Patriots' roster to overcome the battle of the psyche's...
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