Catching a bomb from Tom Brady wouldn’t be unheard of for Rob Gronkowski, but the veteran tight end broke another record over the weekend when he pulled in a pass thrown from a helicopter 600 feet overhead in Arizona.
ESPN’s Adam Schefter tweeted about the historic ball drop.
“Rob Gronkowski and Tedy Bruschi are the honorary head coaches for the University of Arizona’s spring game. But before the game, Gronk set a world world record because... he’s Gronk,” Schefter tweeted.
Gronk’s grab, which happened before the University of Arizona’s spring game in Tucson, put the Tampa Bay Buccaneer in the Guinness Book of World Records. The 31-year-old Amherst, N.Y., native also holds the NFL’s record for most post-season touchdown catches as well as most Super Bowl receiving yards by a tight end. He is very likely to be inducted into the Hall of Fame when he winds down his football career.
University of New Mexico professor Nick Flor calculated on Twitter that the ball Gronkowski caught Saturday was plummeting to Earth at more than 133 mph. That’s twice the speed at which a football is known to have been thrown by a human.
Gronk’s first two attempts at the record amounted to a pair of incomplete passes, but number three was charm that prompted the Arizona players standing on the sidelines to swarm their fellow Wildcat. He was a standout athlete at the school before being drafted by the NFL’s New England Patriots in 2010.
