It's been one of the feel-good storylines of the NFL offseason.
Tom Brady leaves New England for Tampa Bay, calls up his old buddy Rob Gronkowski and the tight end comes out of retirement to play in the NFL again.
Has all the makings, right? The Shawshank Redemption II: Tom and Gronk escape Warden Belichick and live out their football lives making their own hours and sailing boat charters for Captain Bruce on the Gulf of Mexico.
Who wouldn't love that kind of movie? I'm betting some Patriots fans would privately relish watching Brady and Gronkowski soar to great heights away from Fort Foxborough.
One possible flaw in that script: What if Gronkowski is just ... average? Because if you asked around the league — including sources around the team — they'd say that's what he was his final season in New England. And the chances of a year off helping him improve over the course of a full season are not good.
"Was he just beaten down at the end of 2018 and, after a year off, he'll come back refreshed for one final run?" said one AFC general manager. "Sure, I guess that's possible. Tampa better hope so, or they just wasted $9 million. What he showed in 2018 ... that's not worth it."
Let's just get one thing ... actually two things ... out of the way.
One, what the executive said: Maybe we have no idea just how low Gronkowski was physically and mentally during the 2018 season. Maybe a year off to get his body and mind was exactly what Gronkowski needed and we'll see more of explosiveness.
I mean, we're talking about a guy who started to have a lot of issues during training camp in 2017. We were the first to question what was going on with Gronkowski and while it was mocked by other reporters (shocker ... same when we kept talking about Gronkowski possibly being traded ... and that happened too), Tom Curran later reported Gronkowski contemplated retirement during that camp.
So we could be talking about a guy who for the last two years sort of went through the motions, mentally and physically, and we'll now see a rejuvenated Gronkowski similar to 2016 before his injury.
If you're Tampa, that's what you're hoping for.
The other factor, before we get into some of the issues that cropped up with Gronkowski, is that even if his legs are average, he still has his height, arm length and hands — those all add up to an elite catch radius that still produced huge plays, including two plays that were directly responsible for the Patriots winning their last Super Bowl:
Remember when they was saying Eric Berry was the “Gronk stopper”? pic.twitter.com/Tz7R6zekyw
— TheClutchShow (@C1utchman85) January 21, 2019
Rob Gronkowski has retired after 9 seasons in the NFL. Final catch of his career⬇️
pic.twitter.com/WonO1QWU4j
— T/T Sports (@Sports2T) March 24, 2019
ROB GRONKOWSKI! WHAT A CATCH! pic.twitter.com/Df4vLadcuV
— Casey Baker (@CaseyBake16) October 30, 2018
YAC+ is similar to plus-minus; it estimates how much YAC a receiver gained compared to what we would have expected from an average receiver catching passes of similar length in similar down-and-distance situations. This is imperfect -- we don't specifically mark what route a player runs, and obviously a go route will have more YAC than a comeback -- but it does a fairly good job of telling you if this receiver gets more or less YAC than other receivers with similar usage patterns.
A Patriots starter was told by Guerrero not to do squats. When the strength staff made that part of the player’s normal in-season workout, the player refused to do the exercise. That only added to the tension between the Patriots and Guerrero.