Robert Kraft Responds to Rob Gronkowski Trade Rumors
The Patriots owner said that the gossip was "a bunch of hogwash" and that he did not veto a trade involving the tight end.
Photo via AP/Michael Dwyer
Robert Kraft would like everyone to just calm down and stop being jealous of the popular kids.
After whisper networks lit up on Friday afternoon with theories that the Patriots were planning to trade away tight end and resident goofball Rob Gronkowksi, the team’s owner told reporters he’s had it up to here with the churning rumor mill.
A deal, of course, never came to fruition and amounted to little more than a small skirmish amidst an incredibly dramatic off-season for the defending AFC champions. And all the chatter, according to Kraft, who decided to adopt the lexicon of a Victorian Era gentleman, is “hogwash.”
“I guess when your team is good, people are looking for things, and I’ll just tell you it’s a bunch of hogwash that I vetoed some trade,” Kraft told reporters, according to ESPN. “That was never in the works. It’s just completely made up.”
Video: Robert Kraft, after the Myra Kraft Community MVP event, goes on record with strong denial of trade rumors (re: Rob Gronkowski). pic.twitter.com/Sw4ZAtPUlr
— Mike Reiss (@MikeReiss) June 12, 2018
Hogwash, he says!
Kraft, 77, went on to ditch the diction of decades past in favor of a more modern take on why gossip is bad.
“I think we have to be careful in society today—people just can’t come out and say things,” he told ESPN. “And this bit about us trading Gronk to the 49ers or Tennessee … there’s no basis to it and it gets a life of its own.”
Twitter users would likely contest the fact that in 2018, you “just can’t come out and say things,” but we appreciate Kraft’s nod to the importance of the truth.
A tank top-clad Gronk, for his part, leveraged the language of President Trump and told WBZ that all the rumors were “hashtag fake news.”
Gronkowksi’s career has been riddled with injuries, and he reportedly considered retiring at the end of last season. But in April, the tight end finally confirmed he’d be back on the field (in a Patriots uniform, of course) this season.
