TAMPA, Fla. — After jokingly telling Peyton and Eli Manning on their ESPN Monday Night Football MegaCast that he “doesn’t watch film,” Tampa Bay Buccaneers tight end Rob Gronkowski cleared the air Wednesday, saying that, yes, he actually does watch film and his job isn’t as cushy as he made it out to be.
“I actually watch tons of film. An overload of film. I will probably blame [PR director] Nelson [Luis] over there. He asked me eight times to go on the show. I told him, ‘It’s not a good idea.’ They always get me in that type of silly atmosphere and that’s what happened,” Gronkowski said, joking. “Now Coach [Bruce Arians] threatened me. I don’t get my vet day anymore.”
After Arians’ news conference Wednesday, just before Gronkowski’s was set to begin, Arians did jokingly tell him in front of reporters that he wasn’t allowed to take any more veteran rest days after the comments he made.
Gronkowski joked on the show, “I just run by guys and if I’m feelin’ good, I’m feelin’ good. … “I actually do go up to Tom [Brady] ’cause Tom watches like, I don’t know, 40 hours of film a week. I go, ‘Tom, who’s covering me this week? What type of coverages are they doing?’ I go, ‘That’s why I love playing for you, dawg. You just know everything.'”
Gronkowski also joked that he doesn’t practice on Fridays because it’s red zone day and he doesn’t need to because he’s “Red Zone Robby G already, baby.”
“Trust me, I watch so much film that my girlfriend gets mad at me. She friggin’ throws s— at me sometimes, I’m watching so much film,” Gronkowski joked. “Sometimes I go home and she’s like, ‘You’ve been gone all day and now you’re studying, you’ve got your iPad out,’ and I’m like, ‘Yeah, I’ve gotta get into it. I gotta learn.'”
Despite Gronkowski’s fun-loving, good-natured personality that’s helped his blossoming second career as an entertainer, he has always had a reputation as a tenacious worker, which the Bucs coaching staff has praised him for since he arrived last year. His four touchdown catches in the first two games of the season are most in the NFL and he has missed only one target, catching 12 of 13 passes for 129 yards.
“It never feels like totally easy,” Gronkowski said. “It really never does. Even when it looks easy, it just doesn’t really like, ‘Oh, man, that was easy.’ It’s just really not because there’s just so much work that goes into it. But I would say that just the way we’ve been practicing and just being on the same page, we’ve just gotta [continue] to build that or else teams are gonna stop you.”