Gronk Was Hit with a Beer and It Left a Mark
He showed his battle wound to Jimmy Fallon.
New England Patriots tight ends Dwayne Allen, left, and Rob Gronkowski react to fans during their victory parade through downtown Boston, Tuesday, Feb. 5, 2019, to celebrate their win over the Los Angeles Rams in Sunday’s NFL Super Bowl 53 football game in Atlanta. The Patriots have won six Super Bowl championships. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola)
Gronk was not immune to the dangers of beer-tossing at the Patriots victory parade this week, he tells Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show.
Rob Gronkowski proved he was as skilled at both partying incredibly hard and snagging beer cans out of the air, as multiple videos from the scene show him catching them with ease and finesse. But even a professional touchdown machine, surrounded by similarly talented peers, can’t keep every single can at bay. He says a wayward can bonked him on the side of the head so hard that it bled “all over,” and left a mark that was visible to TV cameras on the NBC talk show.
Here’s Gronk’s appearance on Fallon last night. Said he was initially supposed to go on the show Monday night but couldn’t because he was too “bruised up.” https://t.co/oQ6walw44X
— Zack Cox (@ZackCoxNESN) February 7, 2019
It went down at a moment when the players were getting inundated with airborne alcohol, including multiple beer cans and nips, which Gronk refers to as “nipple shots.”
“At one time, we had literally, there were five of those nipple shots thrown at one time, and there was like five beers coming at one time, and everyone on the duck boats is juking them. We’re getting good practice in for next season, you know?” he says in the interview, pantomiming what it was like to dodge flying Coors Light. “And then the next thing you know, I move back a little and I’m just chilling and boom! Pop! Full beer can right to the face.”
When the Tonight Show cameras zoomed in for a closer look at the star’s face, a small gash next to his left eyebrow was visible. “I was bleeding all over on the parade, on the duck boat,” Gronk continues, adding that his dad stepped in to help block the onslaught and once was seen “karate kicking a beer flying at me.”
Still, Gronkowski took the incident in stride, and described the duck boat parade as “hands down the best party. It’s the best experience anyone can go through.” He clearly recovered just fine, and was spotted posing with fans and fueling up on barbecue later that day.
This isn’t exactly unexpected. Boston had been on flying beer alert ahead of the parade, after the mayhem at last fall’s rolling rally for the World Series-winning Red Sox, and officials warned fans not to chuck booze at the athletes and their families.
His wasn’t the even the only injury. WCVB reports a Weymouth photographer riding along with the parade was also smacked in the head. “He later went to urgent care and liquid stitches were used to close the wound,” the station reports.
Footage shot from the parade route also shows someone hurled a beer can onto the duck boat carrying Tom Brady, narrowly missing the quarterback’s young daughter.
Can we maybe, finally, put this tradition to a rest?
Whatever the opposite of “shout out” is: To the nitwit who almost took out Hoyer’s kid’s face & hit Brady’s daughter with a beer (Twisted Tea? Sam IPA?) — via wbz https://t.co/AMx1CLqVIv pic.twitter.com/HTU4QuBeOP
— John Beattie (@JohnBeattie_) February 5, 2019
