Report: Patriots Were Calling About Trading Rob Gronkowski Three Days Before Draft

This flies in the face of New England’s owner calling Gronk trade rumors “hogwash.”

Rob Gronkowski
A horse named after Patriots' tight-end Rob Gronkowski was withdrawn from the Kentucky Derby. (Jason Miller/Getty Images)
Getty Images

After rumors about New England trading star tight end Rob Gronkowski began swirling in earnest at the end of last week, Patriots owner Robert Kraft addressed the situation yesterday.

“I’ll just tell you it’s a bunch of hogwash that I vetoed some trade,” Kraft said Tuesday. “That was never in the works. It’s just completely made up.”

Today, a report from ProFootballTalk emerged that directly contradicts what Kraft had to say.

According to sources, the Patriots were making, not taking, calls about trading Gronkowski three days before the NFL draft. That timeline makes some sense, as there was uncertainty about if Gronk would be returning to play the NFL. Two days before the draft, he confirmed he would be.

“It’s not known what the Patriots wanted, or whether a deal was actually close,” PFT wrote. “If it was, it never got to the point where Brady made a power play and Kraft made a boss move, literally.”

Perhaps it’s just semantics. Kraft said he never vetoed a trade, not that one wasn’t a possibility.

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