Rob Gronkowski Did Something So Well That Tom Brady Keeps Praising Him Even Now

[ASFN Admin]

You must be registered for see images attach

Rob Gronkowski Did Something So Well That Tom Brady Keeps Praising Him Even Now originally appeared on NESN. Add NESN as a Preferred Source by clicking here.

Some players are the kind you talk about long after they're done playing.

Rob Gronkowski, particularly for the New England Patriots, is one of those guys.

Tom Brady, even in July of 2026, is praising Gronk.

Brady was on the New Heights podcast recently, the show hosted by Kelce brothers Travis and Jason. And as one might expect, Gronkowski came up.

The GOAT quarterback had plenty of nice things to say.

And really, he went deep on an aspect of Gronk's game that football people understood to be great, but maybe didn't even recognize just how awesome it was: his blocking.

“Gronk was really unique, you know, I think Gronk was the greatest blocking tight end in history,” Brady said on the New Heights podcast. “Gronk could handle defensive ends. He was at the point of attack in the run game… We didn’t care. We would rather go to Gronk than the open-side tackle. So that’s a really underrated part of his game.”

MORE: Bill Belichick nearly took a shocking role with the Broncos

Gronkowski was a matchup nightmare as a pass-catcher, but that also extended into the run game.

That very rarely happens with tight ends. Some of the best pass-catching TEs are guys you wouldn't want to leave in to block very often.

But when Gronk got the blocking assignment, he got the job done in a way that made life easier for everyone else -- and in a way that spoiled Brady.

“When we didn’t have Gronk, I — as a quarterback — for the first time in my career realized like ‘Oh, like we lose those matchups all of the time,’” Brady told the Kelce brothers. “Not only is that not neutral, it’s a loss, so now everything is to the open side, or you’re flashing the tight end back all of the time. And again, it just limits what you’re able to do.”

Gronkowski was often viewed as a cheat code as a receiving tight end. Turns out, that was true as a blocking TE, too.

More Patriots​

• Latest Patriots news
• Tom Brady's Patriots legacy: How legendary QB set new standard
• Complete history of Patriots championships

Continue reading...