Rob Gronkowski Leaves Door Open for NFL Return But His Announcement Was Advocacy for CBD
The Patriots nation is in tears. Rob Gronkowski won’t return in near future, because he agreed to a partnership with a CBD company.
The retired tight end announced his partnership with Abacus Health Products. This put an end to all the rumors regarding his return.
“I’m advocating for CBD to be acceptable for all players for recovery,” the three-time Super Bowl champion said. “You can just call me Mr. Recovery. You know you like that name. Mr. Recovery, baby.
“I was in near constant pain and needed to make a change,” he said. “These products have helped me safely manage pain better than anything else I’ve tried.”
Gronk joins forces with the organization to appeal sports governing bodies to change their stance on CBD.
“I’m here to appeal to the sports governing bodies to update their positions on CBD (so it can be) used by all players. … For the first time in a decade, I’m pain-free.”
During his press conference, Gronk shared his story and explained his reasons to leave the game.
“I needed to recover. I was not in a good place. Football was bringing me down. And I didn’t like it. And I was losing that joy in life. Like, the joy. I’m sorry right now, but, aw, dang, let me …” Gronkowski said, fighting through tears. “But … I really was. And I was fighting through it. And I knew what I signed up for and I knew what I was fighting through, and I knew I just had to fix myself.”
“I needed to walk away, because I needed to do what was best for myself at that moment,” he said. “I truly needed to be selfish in my life for once and walk away.”
It was a big decision, but there was no other way out.
“In the Super Bowl, a couple of minutes into the second quarter, I caught a pass on the left side, cut over, and the linebacker took me right out, right here in my quad. I flipped in the air, and I knew my quad was done. But, I knew it right there and then, I was like, ‘Last game. Super Bowl game. Just give it all you have.’
“Literally, my leg was gigantic. It was insane. The trainer was like, ‘I don’t even know how you played with that in the second quarter.’ I don’t even know how I made that catch [in the fourth quarter]. I was just like … literally, we had two plays. The one play before, I ran the same route. I ran up the seam, and Josh [McDaniels] recalled that play because I know he saw me kind of open. … So he recalled that play, and I was like, I know why he recalled that play. Literally, I’m like, I was just in my mind, like f*** it, you just gotta go to the next level. It’s the Super Bowl. You gotta go full speed. You gotta do it. I made that catch, that play, while literally my quad was like this big. I couldn’t even move, couldn’t even walk, couldn’t even bend it any farther than this. Don’t even know how I ran. I just have that mentality.
“So, you know, the game went on and everything, and I got done with the game, and I could barely walk. I’m at the after-party, I go to the after-party like this [limping], I sit down, and I’m just chilling all day, like the rest of the night, until 3 a.m.
“I tried to go to bed, I slept for five minutes that night. I couldn’t even think. I was in tears, in my bed, after a Super Bowl victory. It didn’t make that much sense to me.
“And then, for four weeks, I couldn’t even sleep for more than 20 minutes a night after a Super Bowl win. And I was like, damn. This sucks. It didn’t feel good. It was one of the biggest, deepest thigh bruises I ever got. Like, I missed a few games [in the past], but during the game I was like, ‘Ah, it’s whatever, it’ll be a two-week injury.’ No, this one was deep. I had internal bleeding, I took out 200 milliliters of blood four weeks later. And then another week later, even more started flowing, and I took out 500 milliliters of blood, and then I took out 300 more milliliters of blood from my quad. So it’s a total of a thousand milliliters I took out of my quad over the four-week period after the Super Bowl. A thousand milliliters out of a quad. I’m telling you … it’s not normal. It was like, record-breaking at the hospital. They were like, ‘Yo!’ I was like, ‘You know I like to break records.’
“Which I do. I think I broke records on and off the field non-stop, and with injuries and everything. So that’s just what I do.”
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About The Author
R. M.
Radmila graduated with a degree in Translation & Interpreting. She is an NBA and NFL writer for The Ball Zone, and has been covering popular sports topics for several years. A loyal Lakers fan, she puts energy into reporting big roster moves, potential trades, on-court-accomplishments, and off-court rumors.
