Rob Gronkowski is one of a kind.
He was named to the “NFL 100 All-Time Team” last Friday and Bill Belichick had a hilarious story about his pre-draft visit.
“Rob was kind of a shot in the dark,” Belichick said. “He came up on his pre-draft visit, had a bad visit. We put him in a room, came back, he was asleep on the floor. Didn’t make a very good impression. … I brought him in, you know, we’re getting ready to have a meeting with the coaches and go through, then fell asleep on the floor. Oh boy. Kind of got a slow start there. Went to Arizona, didn’t start as a freshman, had a decent year as a sophomore. Caught 30 passes, and then misses junior year with back surgery. Then came out early for the draft. So there wasn’t much to go on. We traded up for him and we just bet that he would come through. He certainly did big-time.”
Belichick appeared on WEEI’s “Ordway, Merloni & Fauria” on Monday and provided a little more context to the story.
“It wasn’t a great visit, but I think that’s — look, you know how it is traveling around cross-country going from one team to the next, getting MRIs and back x-rays, or whatever,” Belichick said. “I am sure it got to him. The energy that Rob has as a football player is I would say at a very high level. Maybe not a (Tedy) Bruschi, but it is up there. It’s pretty high and we didn’t see it.”
Thankfully for all parties, the Patriots were were able to overlook that first impression.
“In the end once we got him here and once he got in the field, Rob was great,” he continued. “He was great. He had a great career here, but he was a great teammate. Everybody loved him and not because of his (personality) and all that, but just the way he competed and the type of teammate he was. Sometimes the first impression is not always the right one.”
