A Former Teammate Said Gronk Use to Get Hammered All Night and Sleep it Off on the Patriots Training Table. But Julian Edelman is Calling Total Bullshit.

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I think I speak for a lot of Patriots fans when I say one of my greatest, simplest, not-at-all guilty, pleasures is falling down the rabbit hole of Rob Gronkowski highlights. Like Larry Bird highlight videos, they just keep getting better the more time passes:

Whoa. I'm sorry. I zoned out there for about 20 minutes. Like an alien abductee experiencing "lost time." Where was I going with all this? Oh, right. This story about Gronk. Which is big, if true:

Source - If anyone mastered work-life balance, it was Rob Gronkowski.

On the field, Gronk was one of the most dominant tight ends in NFL history. … 

Off the field, he was – and still is – an absolute party animal. … 

[S]ometimes, he may have lived it up a bit too much.

One of Gronk's former teammates said that the future Hall of Famer use to "pass out" on training tables.

"We all had these key fobs that gave us 24/7 access to the Patriots facility there in Foxborough, and during the offseason, Gronk would go out all night with his boys in Boston, stay up till 3 or 4 in the morning, whatever it was, and have his crew drop him off at the Patriots facility," former defensive end Jake Bequette said on "Prime Time with Alex Stein." 

Let me just interject here and point something out about Jake Bequette, whom you may not remember:

Jim Rogash. Getty Images.

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After Bequette's Patriots careerdidn't quite work out as hoped (8 games from 2012-13), he became the other kind of Patriot, serving as a Ranger-qualified infantry officer in the 101st Airborne and serving a tour in Iraq. So there'll be no criticism of him coming from me, an aging slob who writes lowest common denominator nonsense on the internet and tells jokes in comedy clubs. He's earned all the respect. We return to his story, already in progress:

"And he would, like, stagger in to the Patriots locker room, key fob in, and go pass out on the training tables in the Patriots training room. …

"So then, like an hour or two later, when the trainers would come in to start their workday, they’d come in there and see Gronk just sprawled out on the training table, just fast asleep. They would go over there, they wouldn’t wake him up, they would roll up one of his sleeves and, you know, stick an IV in his arm. 

"After a couple hours, he would just wake up like Frankenstein revived and go out there and just kick ass."

I repeat, Bequette's integrity is beyond reproach. Still, I can't help but call shenanigans on this, for a number of reasons. 

First, while Gronkowski created and carefully maintained the Gronk fratboy identity - shotgunning beers on the Duckboat, tearing through his t-shirts, packing a men's room stall with his brothers for a game of Crossies, and so on - I never believed it was anything but a fictional character. Better for the brand than describing how much time he spends at the gym or at home playing Grand Theft Auto. 

Second, a girlfriend of the Irish Rose's went on the Gronk Cruise with her daughter (I can confirm her husband hasn't the first clue who Rob Gronkowski is), and said while the other Gronkowskis were off the chain, Gronk was a total pro. Showing up to everything on time. Spending time with every paying customer who asked, etc. In fact, she was convince he was drinking vitamin water the whole time. 

Third, you tell me if you think Bill Belichick would sign off on his tight end using his team's medical facilities for sleeping off his benders like Otis the town drunk used Mayberry's jail cell. (You'll have to forgive the TV Land Boomer reference, but Belichick would get it.) Or the fact his training staff was enabling his star player's self-destructive behavior like Colonel Tom Parker pumping Fat Elvis full of stimulants just to get another shitty Vegas show out of him. (Also a Boomer reference, but you've seen the movie at least.) You might argue he put up with a lot when it came to dealing with Lawrence Taylor back in the day. But he was the coordinator; not the head coach/GM/absolute ruler of his kingdom. I simply cannot picture a world where GM Bill is giving Gronk the richest contract for a tight end in league history while he's passed out on a Gillette Stadium gurney in a drunken stupor every night. 

And I've got the total backing of one of the world's foremost authorities on the subject:

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And, ironically enough, the guy who told the actual story is in total agreement with Edelman and me:

Well OK then. I'm totally confused as to why you'd go on for four paragraphs telling a detailed story about a teammate stumbling into the stadium at all hours of the night carrying a foreign load and then disavow it because some news outlet picked it up. But that's between Bequette and Fox. I'm just going to go with what my instincts and one of Gronk's closest teammates tell me. And if there should be any truth at all to the story Bequette told but now is calling "clickbait," then I'd have every tight end on my roster get boozed up out of his tits every night and then come in for a nap and an IV. Because whatever Gronk was doing back then, it fucking worked. 

Thanks for your service, Bequette. You too, party animal Gronk.