Everybody hates Gronk

Rob Gronkowski is young and brash.  He’s loud and obnoxious.  He is pompous, arrogant, boisterous, dramatic.  He poses with porn stars and posts the pictures on Twitter.  He spikes the ball extra hard after a touchdown, even when he is told by the league not to do so.  He jaws at his opponents.  He poses on the field.  He’s James Dean in a helmet.  And he’s quickly becoming the best Tight End in football.

Yeah, I guess it’s easy to see how you can hate Rob Gronkowski if you are a fan of the opposing team.  The above reasons to hate Rob Gronkowski are extremely vexing to his detractors for one reason – he is simply unstoppable on the football field.  You don’t want to see the Spike of Doom?  Go ahead and try and stop him from getting into the end zone.  That’s easier said than done.  He’s been there 20 times already in 26 career games.  That is the fastest a tight end has ever gotten to 20 touchdowns.  In fact no other tight end has ever gotten to 20 touchdowns by the end of their second season.  He’s done so with 6 games to spare.  Yeah, yeah, yeah he’s got Brady throwing him the ball.  So did Daniel Graham, Ben Watson, Christian Fauria, and Jermaine Wiggins.  Did he make those guys superstars?  This weekend Gronkowski will surpass the 100 reception mark for his career, 27 games in.  He’s also less than 150 yards away from 1,500 in his career.  A 13.8 career average has helped that out.  And to think that he has accomplished all this before his 23rd birthday.

Maybe the worst part about all of his antics is that he gets away with it.  That must crawl at his haters.  The fact that he is coached by Bill Belichick, quarterbacked by Tom Brady and they don’t seem to be phased by all of the show boating.  Belichick and offensive coordinator Bill O’Brien will still draw up plays to get him open and Brady will keep chucking him the ball.  After all they want to win right?  Gronk will help you do that no matter how insufferable a personality he has.  And he’ll keep doing things like taking pictures with porn stars and doing other things that he has to apologize for.  And he will apologize.  And his lovers will go on loving and his haters will go on hating.  And he’ll keep on putting up stats and making big plays.  And the cycle will continue.  Gronk just doesn’t care.

I’m not a Patriots fan but I definitely have become a fan of Rob Gronkowski and I think every other football fan should do the same.  The reason being is that behind the nu-school persona there is an old school football player.  He’s the Mike Ditka of Generation Y.  So what if he is a meat head?  He is an entertain meat head.  He’s also tough as nails, a hell of a pass catcher, a tremendous route runner and a pretty good blocker too.  He also loves to put his body on the line no matter what the situation is.  He admitted that he wouldn’t admit to suffering a concussion.  Surely a league which has put an emphasis on head injuries can’t be happy about that.  But that’s Gronk being Gronk.  He’s going to spike the ball harder and harder until they stop telling him not to.  What’s wrong with injecting a little fun into the No Fun League.  It’s like Chad Ochocinco back when he was good.  It doesn’t hurt anyone.

If my little sales pitch just now didn’t work and you still are stubborn enough to want to continue hating on the man remember one thing – he’s not going away anytime soon.

Twitter @ErikVenskus