FOXBOROUGH, Mass. — If the New England Patriots were making a late-season charge and quarterback Tom Brady attempted to entice tight end Rob Gronkowski out of retirement, would Gronkowski take the plunge?
“No, I wouldn’t say so,” Gronkowski answered on The Adam Schefter Podcast. “I’m truly enjoying my time off, truly enjoying what I found getting into business. I’ve got a lot of things dropping in the next couple of weeks, with my brothers [and] family. I’m really staying busy with it.”
Gronkowski, who is promoting the use of CBD products, was emotional in appearance last week in New York when he said, “I was not in a good place. Football was bringing me down, and I didn’t like it. I was losing that joy in life.”
He also told HBO that he first considered retiring in 2017 training camp “where I was trying to go out to the practices during the summer, and I was getting smoked by every rookie.”
On the Adam Schefter podcast, Gronkowski was full of laughter, and said he had no doubt that he could physically play football again. But mentally, he isn’t at the point where he would want to do so.
“If I truly have that desire, like I feel like my name is getting called and there’s a passion inside me and it’s a consistent one, then that’s the time I would entertain coming back,” he told Schefter.
The Patriots kept just two tight ends on their initial 53-man roster — four-year veteran Matt LaCosse and 2018 seventh-round draft choice Ryan Izzo.