Fencer
Pro Bowl Player
- Joined
- Oct 2, 2006
- Messages
- 14,293
- Reaction score
- 3,986
Fun Grantland article:
A Gronking to Remember
(And The Ravens Were Nevermore...)
http://grantland.com/the-triangle/a-gronking-to-remember-and-the-ravens-were-nevermore/
A Gronking to Remember
(And The Ravens Were Nevermore...)
http://grantland.com/the-triangle/a-gronking-to-remember-and-the-ravens-were-nevermore/
Brady is the team’s face, and Belichick its brains, but Gronkowski has become the renegade soul. It is more than simply being a brass band of a public personality, although he certainly is that. It’s also that he has become the focal point for all of the odd stuff that accrues around any successful team. For example, just this week, it was revealed that someone by the name of Lacey Noonan had published A Gronking to Remember... Gronkowski didn’t ask for this, of course. Let us face the facts plainly. Some people are natural magnets for the weird and the wonderful. Gronkowski is plainly one of those people.
He still has the wide eyes and the broad smile of someone who is continually surprised at everything about this very preposterous profession of his. He’s also far and away the best player at his position in the league, and, perhaps, one day, he will be reckoned to be the best tight end who ever played. He has had serious injuries and has bounced back from all of them, and, while he is fluent in the PatriotSpeak that is characteristic of all of his teammates, there is something undefinably goofy in the way he rolls out the clichés. It’s not that he doesn’t take them seriously. He does. It’s just that you can see in him a lot more percolating behind all the talk about doing your job and letting your teammates do theirs, and playing one game at a time, and so forth. It’s not just that he believes it. It’s that he believes it. Some players are Belichick converts. Gronkowski is a Belichick acolyte.
...
They move on now. But it is a different New England team even from those that have been so successful since the turn of this century. There is an assurance here that goes beyond merely being confident in your own abilities and those of your teammates. There is a kind of resilience to this bunch that bespeaks a group of people who take their work, but not themselves, seriously. They are close to Gronking up the whole damn thing again, and they’re making merry doing it, and if you don’t like it, well, your mother’s a Sasquatch.
He still has the wide eyes and the broad smile of someone who is continually surprised at everything about this very preposterous profession of his. He’s also far and away the best player at his position in the league, and, perhaps, one day, he will be reckoned to be the best tight end who ever played. He has had serious injuries and has bounced back from all of them, and, while he is fluent in the PatriotSpeak that is characteristic of all of his teammates, there is something undefinably goofy in the way he rolls out the clichés. It’s not that he doesn’t take them seriously. He does. It’s just that you can see in him a lot more percolating behind all the talk about doing your job and letting your teammates do theirs, and playing one game at a time, and so forth. It’s not just that he believes it. It’s that he believes it. Some players are Belichick converts. Gronkowski is a Belichick acolyte.
...
They move on now. But it is a different New England team even from those that have been so successful since the turn of this century. There is an assurance here that goes beyond merely being confident in your own abilities and those of your teammates. There is a kind of resilience to this bunch that bespeaks a group of people who take their work, but not themselves, seriously. They are close to Gronking up the whole damn thing again, and they’re making merry doing it, and if you don’t like it, well, your mother’s a Sasquatch.
