Albert Breer of TheMMQB.com mentioned during an appearance on “The Herd With Colin Cowherd” that the Patriots reached out to a few teams including the Lions, Titans, Texans and 49ers about a possible trade involving TE Rob Gronkowski.
“I don’t think they were shopping Gronk to the entire league, but there were some teams they trust that I know they talked to. Detroit, Tennessee, Houston, San Francisco — you guys can make the connections there,” Breer said, via NESN.com.
A report surfaced a few weeks ago that the Patriots had trade offers on the table from both the Titans and 49ers that owner Robert Kraft later refuted.
For what it’s worth, Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk reported last week that the Patriots called teams about a potential Gronkowski trade as recently as three days before this year’s draft.
According to Breer, Gronkowski’s contract situation was at the center of his discontent with the team.
“This kind of came to a point where he sort of disengaged from the program and asked for a raise,” Breer said. ” … there was this bizarre press conference before that monster truck rally that Gronk had. That sort of served as the ‘All right, we need to get him in here now and need a sit-down talk with him because this can’t keep going the way it’s going.’
“So Bill has Gronk in, and at that point, Bill had some discussions about trading him and Gronk sat down with Bill and all indications I got was that Gronk basically affirmed to Bill he wants to be a Patriot. That’s when they decided ‘OK, we’re gonna try to work out contract terms and go forward with this thing,” but there was a come to Jesus moment.”
The expectation now is that Gronkowski will remain in New England and the two parties are reportedly working on a restructured deal.
Gronkowski, 28, is a former second-round pick of the Patriots back in 2010. He is in the sixth year of his eight-year, $55.23 million contract that included $13.17 million guaranteed.
Gronkowski has outplayed this contract by a mile and was one of the most underpaid players in the NFL. He was set to make base salaries of $8 million (2018) and $9 million (2019) over the remainder of the contract when he agreed to a restructured contract last summer.
The Patriots added some incentives to Gronkowski’s contract last year that allowed him to make $10.1875 million for the 2017 season. As of now, Gronkowski stands to earn $8.91 million for the 2018 season.
In 2017, Gronkowski appeared in 14 games and caught 69 passes for 1,084 yards receiving and eight touchdowns for the Patriots.
We’ll have more regarding Gronkowski as the news is available.
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