{"id":31949,"date":"2025-05-07T20:52:12","date_gmt":"2025-05-07T20:52:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/31949\/"},"modified":"2025-05-07T20:52:12","modified_gmt":"2025-05-07T20:52:12","slug":"rob-gronkowski-reveals-patriots-almost-lost-him-to-afc-rival-during-2010-nfl-draft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/31949\/","title":{"rendered":"Rob Gronkowski Reveals Patriots Almost Lost Him to AFC Rival During 2010 NFL Draft"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When fans talk about the New England Patriots, the names Tom Brady, Rob Gronkowski, and Bill Belichick almost always come up. The years that the trio put together were impressive, to say the very least.<\/p>\n<p>Gronkowski is a candidate for the best tight end of all-time conversation. There are other names in the debate as well, but he was a generational talent at the position.<\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p>To end his career, Gronkowski followed Brady to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. However, he is still thought of most for his time with the Patriots.<\/p>\n<p>While he had a legendary tenure in New England, Gronkowski was almost never part of the franchise. In the 2010 NFL draft, another team almost took him.<\/p>\n<p>During an appearance on the &#8220;Dudes on Dudes Podcast,&#8221; Gronkowski <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/schultz_report\/status\/1920188737377517896\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:revealed;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">revealed<\/a> that he was going to be taken by the Baltimore Ravens before the Patriots traded up one pick ahead of them to select him.<\/p>\n<p>He was selected by New England with the No. 42 overall pick in the second round of the 2010 draft.<\/p>\n<p>Things were that close to being so different. If the Ravens had taken Gronkowski, he could have helped lead them to some of the same success that he had with the Patriots.<\/p>\n<p><img alt=\"New England Patriots legendary tight end Rob Gronkowski.\u00a9 Christopher Hanewinckel-Imagn Images\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"960\" height=\"651\" decoding=\"async\" data-nimg=\"1\" class=\"standard-img\" style=\"color:transparent\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/cc6e3707c064d7e533abc6b850512b9f.jpeg\"\/><\/p>\n<p>New England Patriots legendary tight end Rob Gronkowski.\u00a9 Christopher Hanewinckel-Imagn Images<\/p>\n<p>Throughout his career with New England and the Buccaneers, Gronkowski terrorized opposing defenses. He played in 143 total games, catching 621 passes for 9,286 yards and 92 touchdowns.<\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p>Belichick was a legendary head coach, but it&#8217;s stories like these that show just how good he was as a general manager as well. As for Baltimore, the Ravens can only wonder what could have been.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/sports.yahoo.com\/article\/ohio-state-coach-strong-opinion-162153587.html\" data-ylk=\"slk:Related: Ohio State Coach Has Strong Opinion About What Patriots Are Getting in TreVeyon Henderson;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas;outcm:mb_qualified_link;_E:mb_qualified_link;ct:story;\" class=\"link  yahoo-link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Related: Ohio State Coach Has Strong Opinion About What Patriots Are Getting in TreVeyon Henderson<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When fans talk about the New England Patriots, the names Tom Brady, Rob Gronkowski, and Bill Belichick almost&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":31950,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2050],"tags":[117,3851,7,6085,1167,249,2326,2094,6,208,8567,250,614,1369],"class_list":{"0":"post-31949","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-england-patriots","8":"tag-baltimore-ravens","9":"tag-bill-belichick","10":"tag-football","11":"tag-jordan-schultz","12":"tag-new-england","13":"tag-new-england-patriots","14":"tag-newengland","15":"tag-newenglandpatriots","16":"tag-nfl","17":"tag-patriots","18":"tag-rob-gronkowski","19":"tag-tampa-bay-buccaneers","20":"tag-tim-tebow","21":"tag-tom-brady"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114468536046646942","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31949"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31949\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31950"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}