Turns out, Rob Gronkowski was feeling the boredom of not playing football earlier this season.
Buccaneers coach Todd Bowles told the Tampa Bay Times that Gronkowski reached out to the team and had several discussions with the future Hall of Fame tight end about returning to the team in november
“It was more of a conversation than anything,” Bowles shared. “Usually when you have to think about playing, you probably don’t want to play. When it’s just an argument, I didn’t think much of it at the time.”
Discussions of Gronkowski’s potential return occurred around Thanksgiving. The Buccaneers had the bye week the weekend before the holidays and had just picked up two wins to improve to 5-5. However, many of the Buccaneers’ offensive struggles have continued after the bye week as they have lost three of their last four games.
Gronkowski raised eyebrows Wednesday when he tweeted “I’m a little bored” with a neutral face emoji, fueling speculation that he would end his second retirement.
Gronkowski said two teams contacted him after his tweet.
“It was unbelievable,” Gronkowski said on FanDuel TV on Thursday. “I won’t say who, but yeah, there were two teams. It was pretty crazy to me that everyone saw the tweet.”
Gronkowski also said he was surprised by the reaction to the tweet.
“Actually, I barely tweet,” Gronkowski said. “But I’m a bit bored, people took it when I got back into football straight away. It was mind-blowing, actually, how my agent hit me, two teams hit me. It was crazy. Actually, friends were hitting on me too, like, “Bro, are you really going to go back to football? I don’t see that happening.” I said, ‘You know I’m not.’
The 33-year-old played at a high level during his final two seasons in Tampa Bay, leaving retirement to rejoin Tom Brady when the quarterback signed with the Buccaneers in 2020. Gronkowski had 100 receptions for 1,425 yards and 13 touchdowns in 28 regular season games.
In six playoff games with the Buccaneers, Gronkowski had 17 receptions for 226 yards and three touchdowns, two of which came in their Super Bowl LV victory over the Kansas City Chiefs.
“I’m not going to play this year,” Gronkowski said. “I can’t tell you what I’m going to do next year or the year after that. You never know. There could be a small chance.”
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