Thousands of miles from the Russini-gate drama enveloping Foxborough, Rob Gronkowski was all smiles as he showed off his brand-new boat while FaceTiming Patriots media.
“It's a pontoon boat, single engines, nothing fancy. But let me tell you, they're the best boats, and they ride really nice. And today's my first day on it, so I'm actually learning right now how to park it and how to drive it. And it's going really well,” Gronkowski said. “I'm already in the Hall of Fame of driving boats.”
The Krafts announced, Wednesday, that their most charming player of all time would be inducted into the Patriots Hall of Fame.
Even with the deluge of tabloid fodder surrounding head coach Mike Vrabel, Gronkowski’s honorary moment is markedly different from other recent dynasty-era player celebrations. This summer is the first offseason since Tom Brady’s departure – the de-facto endpoint to the dynasty – that New England has a target on their back as a team to beat.
It was just last August when Robert Kraft implored fans to return to Foxborough for Patriots games, remarking on the hoards of Brady jersey-clad maniacs who poured into the plaza to see No. 12’s bronze unveiling, and hear from him as he treated fans to another victory lap - less than two years after his sold-out, three-hour Hall of Fame ceremony in June of 2024.
“Wow,” Kraft told the crowd, at Brady’s statue debut. “I hope this is a predictor of the upcoming season, this kind of support.”
For the first time in six years, it was. New England pulled of a gutsy win in Buffalo in Week 5 and went on a 10-game winning streak that only ended with a close loss to the Bills in mid-December. Second-year quarterback Drake Maye was runner-up for MVP, and Vrabel won Coach of the Year. It felt like the glory days, right up until the Super Bowl, when the Seahawks whomped them.
That final loss and Page Six shouldn’t diminish from the reality of how different the fanfare, expectations, and standard around Gillette Stadium will be, when Gronkowski gets his red jacket, compared to when Julian Edelman was inducted in 2025, or even Vince Wilfork in 2022.
Before Maye and Vrabel, the Patriots were at a serious risk of being yet another “remember when” franchise, trotting out the older, grayer versions of the heroes who actually won stuff. Fans couldn’t be blamed for growing cynical about Brady’s Hall of Fame ceremony being a ticketed event, or worse, tuning out the team by Week 4 and choosing the pumpkin patch and T.J. Maxx over WBZ. Edelman’s ceremony came on the heels of back-to-back four-win seasons. Wilfork’s honors followed the unsustainable success of a free agency spend-a-palooza that wrapped with a first-round beatdown in the playoffs.
It’s nice kismet that New England’s most cheerful guy gets to celebrate while the team is hot again. The Patriots would do well to hold onto the feeling of relevance and import from last season, and invest in every way they can to do what would honor Gronkowski best – keep this party going.
