BINGO
It looks to me as though this thread has been edited and some of the more heated posts were deleted. That is fine so thank you to the moderator or whoever requested the change.
Back to the topic. Where does the measurable and testable data come from to determine that there is a 20% (or whatever number) chance that Rob returns to the Patriots? It is of course someone's opinion.
I officially apologize to the members that are writing about statistical analysis. You are entitled to your opinion.
My Opinion is that he will not come back. If he does come back, that will mean that I am 100% wrong and I will be willing to admit it.
PS: None of this is about liking or disliking Rob Gronkowksi.
I hold these truths to be unknowable, to paraphrase Jefferson, in regards to the most important variables in Gronk's mind.
It's not even opinion, it's hope. People just hope Gronk will be back. They're assigning false precision to hope by application of the familiar "X% chance of..." language to it.
But we don't really have inside info on why players decide to retire.
Now that said, we do know the things that would attract a player to come back (they have some affection for some persons on the team; in TFB's case, that would likely be magnified, because who's a better guy to catch passes from? They have the ability to win another ring. Etc.)
We do know the things that would push someone away. (Football hurts. Football gronk style hurts more & injures you. Football for BB can be challenging for a big ego, but we have no real evidence how much this last part comes into play. He would have to live down denting a Lombardi. That might actually go into the pro rather than con column.)
But no matter how many web pages we read, even if he's quoted in interviews and even if he's not in any way misquoted or manipulated, we don't know what Gronk thinks.
The most optimistic would probably also note that Gronk could be convinced he has half-seasons left in him, and that he might get some advantage out of Favre-style psuedo-retirements. If so, there is no way to determine conclusively that the advantage pertains to playing on the Pats rather than playing somewhere else - whether moving teams would be eased by a psuedoretirement is discoverable, however, w/contract details (I don't know them.) Bear in mind, though, they'd be contract details in pursuit of a very unlikely conspiracy theory.
A good time to discuss his return to football would be when he returns to football
