Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski has taken a great deal of criticism this week for taking off his shirt and dancing the night away at a party hours after New England lost Super Bowl XLVI.
But Patriots president Jonathan Kraft said in an interview on ESPN Boston Radio that he supports Gronkowski as a great competitor who cares deeply about the team.
“One thing I do know is the guy is 100 percent a passionate when it comes to football,” Kraft said, via the Boston Herald. “He loves football. He wants to win. He doesn’t like losing. I don’t know specifically what people are questioning, but he’s an ultimate competitor. We’re excited he’s on our football team. I think the team did accomplish a lot this year. Unfortunately, we fell a little bit short of the ultimate goal. I do think that he and the other players probably have different ways of both celebrating what we were able to achieve and dealing with the disappointment of the night, and I think it’s hard to personalize how any individual would deal with that and project it on someone else. I’d probably leave it at that.”
Kraft added that Gronkowski does “everything and then some that he’s asked to do. . . . He hasn’t broken any laws, he hasn’t done anything else, and I think it’s hard to place value judgments.”
PFT Planet appears to be evenly split on the matter, with 46 percent objecting to Gronkowski’s postgame antics, 43 percent having no problem with the after-party and 11 percent having no opinion.