Rob Gronkowski has had several weeks to rest the back and ankle injuries that have plagued him throughout much of the 2018 season, but one longtime NFL writer in New York does not think that will matter. In fact, he thinks Gronk’s career might as well be over heading into Week 12.
With the New England Patriots set to take on the New York Jets on Sunday, Manish Mehta of the New York Daily News decided the timing is right for a Gronkowski obituary. In the piece, Mehta compares Gronk to Bernie, the dead guy whom the popular film “Weekend at Bernie’s” centers around. The back page of the paper took that reference and ran with it.
Today’s @NYDailyNews Back Page:
The end is near for Rob Gronkowski… and the Patriots know it.
Story: https://t.co/IrFwbUUTBm
Back page: pic.twitter.com/cq7pAxDPF5
— Manish Mehta (@MMehtaNYDN) November 21, 2018
Gronkowski certainly hasn’t looked anything like the dominant tight end he was in years past, but Mehta described him as “a beaten and battered prized fighter who looks sad and lost” and a “prideful, wobbly 6-6, 268-pound dude plodding along like some tip-calculator-carrying resident of Del Boca Vista,” among other things.
Sunday’s game should be a good indicator of how much the extra rest helped Gronkowski, but there are plenty of people — myself included — who agree that he is playing out the final games of his career. Even Tom Brady has seemed particularly frustrated with Gronk at times this season, and that is something that rarely happened when the two were terrorizing opposing defenses together.
