Chris attended the NFL’s pro day but was disappointed there was little opportunity to catch passes and showcase his athletic ability. Instead, players were timed for speed. But because the event was held on turf, one-tenth of a second was added to the fastest times, with the premise that turf is a quicker surface than grass.
“I was with a bunch of other guys and performed pretty well, but I didn’t feel like I made the impression I wanted to,” Chris admitted. “Afterward, my agent said I had to go back and run on grass to prove those times I was clocked at weren’t accurate.”
Being Rob’s brother provided Chris with another opportunity to perform in front of scouts. Coming off back surgery in spring 2010, Rob had not recovered enough to attend the NFL Scouting Combine. Once he regained his strength, a private pro day was held at Arizona for interested scouts. Rob was the featured athlete, but Chris attended too. This allowed him to be given a second look by pro teams.
“Everyone expects me to be good, because I’m a Gronkowski,” Chris said. “Having my last name definitely helps.”
After Chris’s impressive showing alongside Rob, some draft experts predicted he might be selected as high as the fourth round. But fullback is a luxury position in today’s NFL. Few teams keep a pure fullback on their roster. Often, a big running back or a tight end lines up to block for the featured runner.
“My agent knew my chances of getting drafted were pretty small,” Chris admitted. “Teams were calling during the draft, but only one or two fullbacks were even picked that year. It wasn’t a huge deal. Two minutes after the draft ended, I had the option to sign with Dallas. It looked like a good situation. At that point, I started cheering.”
Attending the first practice, Chris was shocked to see Phil Costa, a former Maryland teammate and free-agent offensive lineman, playing center. The two had roomed together in college.
“It was kind of crazy when we walked into Dallas,” Costa recalled. “Our lockers were right next to each other, and we became roommates again. We were both in the same boat, free agents trying to make the team. We didn’t plan any of that. So it’s really a small world.”
Chris and his college pal instantly bonded again, trying to motivate each other, just like they had at Maryland.
“Phil and I knew how tough it would be to make the final roster,” Chris noted. “From that first day we got there, we both said we were going to beat the odds no matter what it took.”
The two trained together and ate together. Then ate again. And again.
“Every day we went in and played as hard as we could,” Chris said. “We both had to put weight on, so we were in the weight room trying to pump each other up. We would work as hard as we could, then go home and shove food into our faces. It was to the point where we just about threw up every night.”
“We cooked chicken and whole wheat pasta and brown rice,” Costa explained. “We were both trying to add five to ten pounds. A lot of time, the last few bites of the meal we gagged trying to put it down.”
Any free agent entering training camp has odds stacked against him. During August practices under the sweltering Texas sun, Chris impressed the Cowboys’ coaches. Still, despite a strong training camp, he was nervous as cutdown day approached. Another fullback, Deon Anderson, had been a sixth-round draft pick in 2007, and few teams retained two players at that position.
“On cutdown day, they sat us in a room and kept pointing to guys who were cut,” Chris said. “I was crouching behind people, trying to hide, thinking, ‘Don’t point at me.’ I was pretty sure I was going to make it, but Dallas never kept two fullbacks before.”
Anderson was the starter, but Chris earned a roster spot as his backup. But Anderson went down with an injury in the season opener. So in just his second week as a pro, Chris was moved into the starting lineup. He scored a touchdown, raising his profile.
“After that, they let Anderson go, so I was the only fullback left,” Chris said.
It was a rags-to-riches story, something Hollywood might concoct. Chris, the low-profile Gronkowski brother, never as big a name as Dan or Rob, had defied long odds and become an NFL starter on a team that many experts considered a Super Bowl contender when the season began.
But the Cowboys began poorly. Entering a Monday-night game on October 25, their record was a lowly 1–4. Facing a must-win matchup against the New York Giants, star quarterback Tony Romo dropped back to pass and was tackled by Michael Boley. Although the pass was completed, Romo’s shoulder was driven into the ground, where he laid on his back, reluctant to get up. As Romo was helped off the field, it appeared the bottom was dropping out of the Cowboys’ season.
The media blamed a young fullback. Chris had missed a block.
“It was a play where anything could have happened,” Chris said. “They had a delayed blitz. We had watched film all week and the Giants never once blitzed from that position. When the ball was snapped, I checked my guy. Coaches taught us to get into our route quickly, so I got out and this guy came late. Romo wound up and threw a long pass.”
It became a defining moment in Chris’s young career.
In the time that followed, Gordy was quick to defend his son. It was a simple missed block, he pointed out, that led to a bad result.
“That one frigging play,” Gordy said, shaking his head. “I watched a Dallas game a year later and the announcers were still talking about it, blaming Chris. Give the kid a break.”
Romo’s injury forced him from the lineup. As the season progressed and losses accumulated, head coach Wade Phillips was replaced by Jason Garrett. Cracks were already evident in the armor, but Romo’s injury became a touchstone. Chris took the heat.
“I was crucified for that missed block,” he said. “It was crazy. They still talk about it. The media in Dallas is tough. You have to deal with them trying to tear you down. Defenses blitz to hit the quarterback. It’s something that happens every game. The bad thing is he got hurt.”
Chris addressed the missed block immediately after the game.
“I told Tony I was sorry and that I made a mistake,” he said. “He said that’s what happens in football, and I should keep working hard. He didn’t blame me. He’s a true leader and a team player. Guys understand that people make mistakes.”
Despite the media attention, teammates did not resent Chris. Football players understand that injuries are fluky, part of the game.
“Everybody’s out there trying to do their best,” said Costa, Chris’s roommate and fellow rookie at the time. “Guys in the locker room understand that. It just so happens Tony got hurt on the play, which magnifies the mistake a hundred times. That happens a lot in the NFL, where a guy will miss an assignment. When someone doesn’t get hurt, it’s just another play. But Tony did get hurt, and there’s the difference.”
With backup quarterback Jon Kitna leading the Dallas offense, the Cowboys fought their way from a 1-5 record to 6-10 by season’s end. But a shadow still hung over Chris because of the negative publicity around Romo’s injury.
He entered 2011 hoping for a shot at redemption. Chris wanted to wipe away everyone’s memory of a single play and prove that he was a complete player. After a long training camp, he was among the final cuts. Despite the surprise, Chris wasn’t unemployed for long.
“During the last cuts I was let go by Dallas,” he said. “The Indianapolis Colts called the next day. I had to go through waivers, and the team with the fewest wins the year before got the first claim. My agent told me that two other teams tried to claim me. But of the three, the Colts had the worst record, which is funny because they won ten games the year before. I received a call from the Colts at noon and two hours later I was on a plane heading for Indianapolis.”
Without quarterback Peyton Manning, who missed the entire season due to a neck injury, the Colts’ season started in free fall and continued downhill. Chris played in seven games until he was injured on a special-teams play against New Orleans.
“I was running full sp
eed and a guy came to block me,” Chris explained. “I shed the block, reached out, and tackled Darren Sproles. I didn’t get him clean, but almost clotheslined him. Doing that, I pulled my arm back and tore the tendon, ripping it right off the shoulder. The tackle was made, but I knew immediately that something was wrong.”
With a torn pectoralis major, Chris underwent surgery to reattach the muscle to the shoulder and bone. It was a similar procedure to the one his father had endured as a college football player. Chris was placed on injured reserve, ending his season.
Being injured is a challenge for any athlete. Technically, Chris was a member of the team, but he did not practice with the guys, instead spending five days each week at rehab and attending games on Sunday.
“It was the first time I hadn’t played because of an injury,” he said with a grim smile. “I basically sat on the couch. It’s a slow process to get the strength back to where it was. I slept in a chair for two months. I couldn’t even do cardio. When I finally got back into it, I was dead after the first workout.”
As spring progressed, however, Chris’s body gradually readjusted. His workouts intensified, and by March, strength was returning.
He took solace watching his brother Rob compete in Super Bowl XLVI, held in his adopted town of Indianapolis. All the Gronkowski brothers and their father gathered there for the game. For a short time, Chris acted as host and tour guide. He also made appearances for the NFL’s Play 60 program, which encourages children to be active for at least an hour per day.
“Every party that you go to offers free drinks,” he recalled. “That week was pretty crazy. I did several charity events, so it was good to keep busy.”
Entering his third NFL season in 2012, Chris was confident that he would be ready to perform in training camp. His challenge was to keep improving. In May 2012, he was traded to the Denver Broncos, a team with high expectations thanks to Peyton Manning’s arrival as quarterback. On the business front, Chris was entering the final year of the first pro contract he signed. Three years; three teams. He anticipated that securing a roster spot in the fall would be a dogfight.
Chris expects to use his business training in some capacity—he has an accounting degree from Arizona—but is not sure what life will be like after the NFL. He wants to keep the door open to all possibilities, which is why he was excited to attend Harvard for a week with fellow football players.
“Once you stop going to school, you lose a little of your smarts,” he said. “In the NFL, you can be cut anytime. I learned that in Dallas. I started pretty much my entire rookie year, and the next year I was gone. Playing football is a year-to-year situation.”
Rob looks at the results of a photo shoot for Muscle and Fitness magazine, 2012.Photo by Jeff Schober.
Rob quickly became a Patriots fan favorite.
9
A New Generation of Tight Ends
“I’m proud of [Rob]. With his size and speed, already he’s one of the most impressive athletes that has ever played that position.”
—DREW ROSENHAUS
DURING THE PAST SEVERAL years, the NFL has seen the tight end position evolve at a brisk pace. Traditionally, tight ends were linemen who blocked, clearing the way for a featured running back. Occasionally, the tight end would catch a pass after the quarterback progressed through options and found no open receivers, only the big man who dropped underneath the defense’s coverage. The play was simply a check-down throw, a way to gain a few positive yards and keep the offense moving. Rarely was it the first choice for offensive production.
There were exceptions, of course. Mike Ditka and Kellen Winslow starred at the position in generations past.
But recently, NFL tight ends have become featured receivers. A new breed of super-athletes with size and speed has led to an offensive explosion at the position.
“Guys are getting bigger and faster, and they’re matchup nightmares,” said Drew Rosenhaus, an agent whose firm represents many starting NFL tight ends. “Look at Rob Gronkowski. He’s a freak. He can run a four-five forty. He’s strong as an ox. He’s nearly two hundred and seventy pounds. How do you tackle him? He’s like a defensive end running with the football. He’s a tank who runs like a deer.”
While Rob is an elite tight end, he is not the only player at that position to shine. Statistics illustrate that the league is entering a golden age for tight ends, and the changes are happening quickly.
In 2011, seven tight ends finished the regular season with seventy-five catches or more. Only three years before, in 2008, there were four. And a decade earlier, in 2001, there were none. Tony Gonzalez of Kansas City and Shannon Sharpe of Baltimore tied for the league lead with seventy-three catches that year.
In 2011, seventeen tight ends had fifty or more catches, and another finished with forty-nine. In 2001, only six tight ends caught fifty or more balls.
More statistical evidence: Ditka, the Hall of Famer long considered the gold standard for tight ends, finished his twelve-year career with forty-three touchdown receptions. After only two seasons, Rob Gronkowski has accrued twenty-seven.
“The tight end position is taking off,” San Francisco’s Vernon Davis boasted to the Associated Press during the 2011 playoffs. “It’s almost as if you have to start playing tight ends with cornerbacks nowadays because they’re fast; these guys are strong and they’re making plays like wide receivers.”
Davis—who was a college teammate of Dan Gronkowski’s at the University of Maryland—is another freak tight end, with a mixture of size and speed. Besides Rob Gronkowski and his teammate Aaron Hernandez, the list of monster tight ends includes Jimmy Graham from New Orleans, Brandon Pettigrew from Detroit, Kellen Winslow II from Tampa Bay (the son of a Hall of Famer), and Jermichael Finley from Green Bay. Still in the mix is longtime star Tony Gonzalez, playing in Atlanta.
Jimmy Graham provides an interesting snapshot of a modern tight end. He arrived at football after being a high school hoops star and playing basketball for four seasons at the University of Miami. During his fifth year of college, he switched to the Hurricanes’ football team, achieving enough success to be noticed at the sport. He was drafted by New Orleans in the third round in 2010.
Likewise, Rob Gronkowski was a high school basketball player. Although he enjoyed the sport and dominated on the court, he chose to pursue football professionally. His coach believes he could have earned a basketball scholarship and been a Division I player.
“I think kids who grew up on basketball courts are now realizing that they can play tight end and if they’re good enough, they can make some money in the NFL,” observed Dana Dimel, a longtime college football coach who is the offensive co-coordinator and running backs and tight ends coach at Kansas State University.
Dimel held the same position at the University of Arizona from 2006 to 2008 when Rob and Chris starred there. It was his innovation that put Chris on the field as an H-back to complement Rob at tight end.
“The high school basketball player can be a tremendous football player,” Dimel said. “You want those soft hands, the ability to post people up, to use your body and get yourself open with your back turned to an opponent. Those are all skills a good tight end needs to have.”
Chuck Swierski, Rob’s high school basketball coach at Williamsville North, sees certain connections between basketball and football when he watches Rob excel in the NFL.
“A lot of his talent is God-given ability,” Swierski noted. “But there was a play I watched where Robbie ran across the middle, stopped, and used his body to keep the defender at bay. Because of that, he was able to receive the ball. The commentator said that’s like a post move in basketball. I don’t know if I had anything to do with teaching him that one, but that’s the connection between the two sports. Rebounding is just like getting position on a pass. It’s using your body to shield off the defender. Now add a guy like Tom Brady who puts the ball wherever he wants. Robbie does his job by creating that space and Brady puts it there.”
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br /> Bigger offensive players are more difficult to defend. Matchup problems immediately ensue for defenses. Should a defense double-team a star receiver? Fine, but that leaves the mega-tight-end in a one-on-one matchup with a smaller safety. By using size and position, the tight end is often able to create space and gain a completion.
Ozzie Newsome, a Hall of Fame tight end who played with the Cleveland Browns and is now the general manager of the Baltimore Ravens, reflected on the changing role of the position.
“When I was playing, the majority of tight ends were point-of-attack guys,” he told an Associated Press newspaper reporter. “You would line up on the line of scrimmage next to the tackle and were basically two-back oriented. Now, tight ends are getting opportunities to be extended away from the tackles, able to stand up on the outside as receivers. These guys are getting taller, bigger, and faster, or as fast as guys in the past. If you were six three, two forty-five, you were a big tight end at that time, and now they go six five, two sixty or two seventy and are just as athletic.”
Perhaps the word “revolution” overstates the emergence of the tight end. If so, “evolution” seems too weak a word. No NFL team better embodies the shift in tight-end productivity than the New England Patriots.
In the 2010 NFL draft, Rob Gronkowski was selected in the second round. Having left college early, even without playing most of his junior year, Rob was expected to be a star, with his unique mix of size, speed, and athleticism. Most teams would be satisfied with acquiring such talent, considering a need had been addressed at that position. With subsequent draft picks, the general manager would choose other areas in which to develop the team.
But the Patriots do not always follow conventional wisdom. How could it hurt to have another tight end in the lineup who was a receiving threat as well? Coach Bill Belichick, after all, once said that pass-catching tight ends who earn big money “are direct descendants of Kellen Winslow.”
Growing Up Gronk: A Familys Story of Raising Champions Page 11
