Rob Gronkowski is considering walking away. The Patriots are limiting Alex Guerrero’s access to the team. Are those two things related?
New information from a Patriots beat reporter suggests they could be.
Mark Daniels of the Providence Journal wrote a piece last month about Gronkowski using the TB12 method, Tom Brady’s approach to training and nutrition that he designed during years of working with Guerrero, his longtime trainer and consultant. Daniels now says the Patriots (who always shy away from commenting on players’ health and fitness) tried to put the kibosh on that story.
Responding to talk that part of Gronkowski’s unhappiness stems from disagreements with the Patriots about how to train, Daniels wrote on Twitter yesterday that the Patriots didn’t want him to write the story he wrote about the TB12 method.
“Gronk agreed to talk to me about his new diet and when the Pats found out, they told me it couldn’t happen. But since Gronk really wanted to talk about it, he did. In the end, I still got a 1400-word feature out of it, but it was annoying how the Pats tried to stop the story,” Daniels wrote.
The story focused on Guerrero’s tips for Gronkowski, which included drinking more water and eating more vegetables, as well as working out with resistance bands. It said Gronkowski had lost fat and gained muscle while working with Guerrero, and it reflected well on Guerrero’s training methods.
But nothing about the story reflected poorly on the Patriots. Unless, that is, the Patriots think that credit for their success is a zero-sum game, and any credit that goes to Guerrero necessarily takes credit away from the team’s own strength and conditioning staff. If that’s the case, it’s easy to believe that Guerrero and the players who work with him -- including Gronkowski and Brady -- would be growing tired of the Patriot Way.