His Year: Rob Gronkowski 2011

The greatest TE season the NFL has ever seen. I'm going to tell you about Gronk's 2011 breakout.

Question marks. Question marks.

If it were a no-brainer to draft Rob Gronkowski, he (and not Kyle Pitts) would have been the first Tight End ever to be drafted in the top five, even in the very talented 2010 NFL Draft, but this was anything but a no brainer.

There are plenty of reasons for a team not to draft a player, and almost all of them applied to Gronkowski. First, the 2010 Draft, with Jermaine Gresham, Aaron Hernandez, Jimmy Graham, Dennis Pitta, in addition to Rob himself, was loaded with Tight End talent. In this year, more than almost any other, it was easy for teams to convince themselves to pass on the extremely talented but slightly flawed Tight End.

Why would they want to do that?

Throughout NFL history, there are four main reasons teams pass on players in the Draft: size, college scheme, personality, and injury. We all know Rob has the size, so let’s go into the other three.

Rob played college football at Arizona, where they ran an air raid style offence. This meant that he was almost exclusively lined up out, like a receiver, and not tasked with many of the responsibilities that he would face as an NFL TE. Coming out of college, Rob had never in-line blocked before, and there were several standard TE routes that he had never ran in college at all. None of this is a disqualifier. You can learn how to play football, but NFL teams generally dislike having to teach. That’s number one.

Number two is that Rob Gronkowski personality we all know and love. Over all the years he’s been in the limelight, it’s become very clear that Rob is a human that’s just not like the rest of us, if you know what I mean. He’s a meathead. He loves to party. He loves to have fun, and he will light up an entire room with his energy. Unfortunately, several teams interpret this personality as a lack of seriousness and a lack of education to football, and use it as another reason to convince themselves to look another direction.

The final and most important strike against Gronk is his injury history, which before even being drafted is already quite long. He missed the entire 2009 college season to have back surgery, on the heels of missing a few games in the 2008 season. We all know the golden rule: hurt in college means hurt in the pros. There were teams who entirely removed Gronk from their draft boards in 2010 on account of this.

These three factors (plus the immense depth of the class) combined to drop this top five talent all the way to the 42nd draft pick. Everybody knows that the Ravens (picking 43rd) are in desperate need of a Tight End, and are going to pick Rob. This means that any team looking to land him for themselves must speak now or forever hold their peace.

The Patriots give the Raiders a sixth round pick in order to leapfrog the Ravens to draft Gronk 42nd overall. Baltimore to this day vehemently deny that they were ever going to draft Gronkowski, but tip their hand by immediately drafting Tight Ends in the third and fourth round. It’s clear that the Patriots got their guy and the Ravens didn’t.

Once Rob got into the Patriots’ building, it became clear that he didn’t know how to do anything. As mentioned above, he’d never played on the end of the line before, and he’d never run certain basic everyday routes before. Therefore, for most of the 2010 season Rob sat behind draft classmate Aaron Hernandez despite being picked 71 picks sooner, but when Hernandez began to have issues (not those issues, not yet) halfway through the season, New England had to play Gronkowski.

He immediately made them feel like fools for not doing it sooner.

Over the final nine games with less Hernandez, Gronk posted 32 catches for 445 yards and seven touchdowns. Over a full season, that’s a 60 catch, 840 yard, 13 touchdown pace, which for a rookie Tight End is utterly fantastic. If not for the unstoppable force that was 2010 Antonio Gates, Rob Gronkowski, the injury prone meathead from Arizona who supposedly knew nothing about football, would’ve come into the league as its best Tight End.

That on its own is great enough, but not what I was looking to talk about today.

What I want to tell you about is Rob’s 2011, my pick for the best season that any Tight End has ever had.

The 2011 Patriots are back to being absolutely loaded on offence. After several years of becoming accustomed to having the best offensive players in the NFL, it’d fallen off a little bit in 2010 with a down year from Wes Welker, leaving the Patriots as still likely the best offence in the NFL, player for player, and definitely the best in terms of results, but no longer by far the best offence.

For 2011 though, New England is definitively back as an offence, and they prove it in week one by generating 0.35 EPA/Play as a team, with Tom Brady throwing for over 500 yards in a crushing 38-24 road win in Miami. However, one of the best offensive games any team has ever had is really kind of meh for Gronkowski. He catches six balls for 86 yards plus a touchdown, which are great numbers, but Wes Welker, Aaron Hernandez, and Deion Branch all catch more balls for more yards than him, making Gronk feel more auxiliary than should ever be the case.

Week two is a little bit more of the same, with Rob again getting the fourth most targets on the team, again less than Hernandez, but he does manage to catch four balls for 86 more yards and score two touchdowns, including a key catch in the fourth quarter to put the game away, moving the score to 28-14 in the eventual 35-21 win.

Through two weeks, that’s ten catches for 172 yards, which if he can keep up the pace is going to be an exceptional season, but it’s clear the Patriots don’t yet entirely know what they have in Gronk, because 14 targets over two games is a pace of just 112 over a whole season. That’s a lot, but it’s nowhere near what a player of this calibre should be getting.

Week three is a hometown game for Gronk (a kid from West New York) in Buffalo, and it bucks this trend a little bit, with Rob getting nine targets. One of those targets is a typical Gronk touchdown catch in the first quarter where the defender is draped all over and it just doesn’t matter. There’s also a stretch in the second quarter that demonstrates why Rob is so special.

The first play of this stretch sees Rob lined up out and finding the open space on a crosser route to convert a key third and nine on the fifty, but the next play is the real kicker. On first and ten from the 26, New England tries one of these weird formations they’d become known for in the 2010s. It sees Wes Welker lined up on the line, and Gronk lined up out in the slot. This forces a safety to have to try to cover him out in space, and there’s just no chance. It’s a 26 yard touchdown and a 21-0 lead for the Patriots.

Our man is not targeted again until 6:57 of the third quarter, with the scoreboard now reading 21-17, but keep in mind the impact he’s having doing things like the odd formations and continually taking the defence’s attention, because Wes Welker is having possibly the best game of his career, and one of the best games I’ve seen out of any receiver.

This target is another one of those Gronk deals where he’s completely blanketed, but with a quick pivot of the hips (in addition to being such a massive human) he’s able to give Tom Brady the biggest window in the world to throw into anyway. You know what I mean. We’ve all seen it a million times if you watched any 2010s Patriots games. Things like this are not sexy to talk about, and I suspect this article will not get that many reads because of that, but this is supreme Tight End skill. Keep in mind that this is just Rob’s 19th career NFL game, and he’s already got the shifty veteran stuff down.

The whole red zone possession, the commentators are talking about Rob and how the Bills are daring Tom to try it, but he never actually gets a target, and the Patriots have to settle for three, but just keep in mind that this is literally every Patriot red zone touch ever, all season. Your defence must be geared to contain Gronk, and then do everything else. A big part of this TE position is the threat you possess, which opens up the field for everybody else.

Oddly enough, he won’t touch the ball again after this, getting just three second half targets (one of them being intercepted) as the Patriots blow the lead, FitzMagic is born, and lose to the Buffalo Bills 34-31.

Like I said, Wes Welker had one of the best games anybody has ever had today (16 catches for 217 and two touchdowns), but don’t understate the impact of Rob Gronkowski and that goofy formation with the TE outside of Wes that New England continuously ran all day. Again, that’s a big part of being an impactful Tight End to create matchup problems like this, which is a concept that infuriates a numbers guy like me because it isn’t quantifiable, but trust me. Continually getting Wes lined up against Safeties and Linebackers had an impact in this.

Independent of his impact on Wes, Rob had a great game in his own right, with 109 yards and two touchdowns of his own in his hometown game. If not for every other Patriot offensive skill player having their worst game of the season so far, this could’ve been another easy win, but instead the Patriots have to go home losers, and things don’t get this good for Gronk again for a while.

After a three game opening where Rob got 22 targets, 17 catches, 281 yards and five touchdowns, the next three see him get just 16 targets, 12 catches, 120 yards and no touchdowns. This includes a horrendous game in Oakland with just one catch, by far his worst of the season. These games are all fairly standard Patriot wins, so the sky is not falling, but I told you this was going to be the greatest Tight End of all time. When does that come in?

I’m glad you asked, because on the other side of the NFL, Jimmy Graham is making a serious run at the all time record for yards in a season by a Tight End. The current record is Kellen Winslow and his 1290 yards in 1980. Shannon Sharpe never beat it. Tony Gonzalez never beat it, but Jimmy has 674 yards already (seven games into the season). That puts him well on pace to smash through the 1290 yard glass ceiling. Gronk is sitting here in week seven with a pittance of 401 yards, meaning he’ll likely break 1000, but won’t get particularly close to 1290.

Surely I’ve titled this article wrong. Surely with numbers like that this article should be about Jimmy Graham.

Right?

Welcome to Rob Gronkowski’s Year.

Week eight is against the Pittsburgh Steelers, which if you’re a great Tight End in this era means that Troy Polamalu is going to sticking to you like glue throughout the entire game, but it just doesn’t matter. At last given the chance to lead the team in targets for the first time this season, Gronk goes haywire. I know I always say to never use EPA to analyse non-Quarterback players, but just look at this. Which of these Patriot offensive players is not like the others?

The basic numbers make this game look slightly less impressive. Gronk ends up with 94 yards and no touchdowns, but he truly carries the team’s offence in the first half, and does draw a holding penalty in the end zone late in the fourth to keep the Patriots alive. They eventually lose this game 25-17, but it’s no fault of Rob’s.

The same goes for next week in week nine, at home against the Giants. This is not the greatest game of Gronk’s career. In terms of yards per target it’s the worst game of his season, but he finally manages to get back in the end zone for the first time in five weeks with 1:49 to go in the fourth, and for the second time this season has a 100 yard receiving game. The Patriots again lose. This time on some 2011 Eli Manning heroics (His Year article incoming), but Gronk is steadily catching up to Jimmy in the race to break the yardage record.

Through half the season Gronk now has 596 yards, meaning he’s likely to just fall short of 1290, but Jimmy has just 791, meaning we’ve taken 78 yards out of that gap over the last two games, and more is yet to come, as in week ten on the road in an easy win against the Jets Gronk has 113 yards and two touchdowns to move to 709 yards through nine games, leaving us just barely short of 1290 pace, while Jimmy has just 82 to move to 873.

At home against the woeful 2011 Kansas City Chiefs for week 11 Gronk has another two easy touchdowns and 96 easy yards as the Patriots easily cover as 17 point favourites. Jimmy does not play, finally taking his bye week and finally putting these two TEs on even footing. Through ten games Rob Gronkowski has 805 yards. Jimmy still has 873.

I’m going to make something clear right now before we get all mixed up in this. Despite this whole yardage chase thing that’s going on, Jimmy Graham is nowhere near as good of player as Rob Gronkowski, and everybody knows it, and I’m going to tell you why.

First off, Rob is rapidly closing in on the all time record for touchdowns in a season by a TE, which is 13. Through ten games Gronk has ten already (despite going four full games plus waiting until the fourth quarter of the Giants game to score without a touchdown). Jimmy only has six and will not be getting that many more. That’s number one.

Number two is that Jimmy is killing Gronk in terms of targets. He’s got 94 targets already. Our man has just 80. 14 targets may not seem like a lot, but that’s a game and a half worth of targets that our man just doesn’t get that Jimmy has gotten. In terms of yards per target, our man is at ten flat, while Jimmy is 9.29.

All of this is to say that even if Jimmy does win this race to the record, it’s just a cute little show. Nobody is going to vote him first team all pro. Nobody is going to pretend he’s the best TE in the NFL. That spot has been sewn up for a while now actually, and it’s our man Rob Gronkowski, and in week 11 of 2011 as well as now nobody is arguing with that. I think my audience is smart enough to not need these paragraphs about more yardage not making you a better player, but for safety I’ve thrown them in anyway.

That brings us back to the Patriots, who in week 12 easily breeze past the Philadelphia Eagles. This is a good bet for the best game of Tom Brady’s career, so the spotlight is not on Gronk at all, but he does get four targets, all of which he catches (only one going shorter than 14 yards), and he scores a touchdown late in the fourth to bring him to 11 total on the season, meaning that any week now he’s going to have the all time touchdown record.

In fact, it comes sooner than we all thought.

Never understate the power of bad feelings folks, as somehow in week 13 we find ourselves in a dogfight with the horrendous 2011 Indianapolis Colts (the ones with no Peyton and no Andrew Luck) despite being at home and being 21 point favourites.

As is too common of a theme, Gronk finishes third on the team in targets, and doesn’t get any until midway through the second quarter, but he makes them count. He converts a key third down in a tied game on this first touch, then catches and runs for 16 yards on his next, and caps off the drive by being as open as a 6-6, 260 pound man can be in the end zone to give the Patriots the lead.

Our man does not touch the ball again for a while, but I’ll take a minute to talk about this two Tight End offence they have going on. Since it’s become abundantly clear throughout this season that New England has a weakness at the outside (meaning not Wes Welker) receiver position, they’ve increasingly taken to just lining their TEs up as receivers. This may seem silly, but it allows the Patriots to almost entirely ignore their weakness on the outside, and nullify their opponent’s best defensive backs because they’re only accustomed to playing on the outside.

With their three best players lining up on the inside, this allows the Patriots to just pick which matchup problem they’d like to go for (having no issues at all trying to create any), and teams more or less must pick if they’d rather get torched by Welker or torched by Gronkowski. It’s telling that most teams throughout this season choose to just put the safety on Welker instead of suffering the wrath of Gronk, but these two players were never the same away from each other as they were together.

Anyways, back to Indianapolis.

We come back to our man scoring a touchdown (wide open again because the Colts, like most teams, cannot handle off the pass offs) to move the score to 24-3, and tie the NFL record of 13 touchdowns in a season. Considering we’re only in week 13, there was no tension at all over whether he was going to break this or not, which makes this moment something of an anticlimax, but nothing can be as anticlimactic as how he actually breaks the record.

This moment is somewhat understated for the occasion, but it’s also a showcase of this man’s immense talent and versatility. We’re down at the goal line again, and Gronk is lined up in the backfield as a running back. The Colts have no idea what they’re doing in the face of this, and a simple little toss means that Rob Gronkowski has broken the all time NFL record with 14 total touchdowns on the season with a rushing touchdown.

This is the first rushing touchdown for any TE in the NFL since 2006, and it will forever stand as the only rush attempt of Gronk’s entire NFL career. None of this actually means anything, but it’s fun, and it’s the moment that broke the record. The score is 31-3, and this game is over. Rob does recover an onside kick, which is also fun, but it doesn’t mean anything either. The Patriots have won 31-24, and we have a new king on our hands.

Gronk did score ten touchdowns in only nine real starts in his 2010 rookie season, so I think everybody knew this record had a real chance of falling, but did anybody think he was going to break it so easily? That’s now 14 touchdowns in 13 games, and recall he went almost five full games in a row without scoring any touchdowns. There are red zone threats, and then there is the greatest red zone threat the NFL has ever seen. That’s what we’re dealing with here.

Oh yeah. Just in case you caught yourself thinking he’s only good in the red zone, week 14 is the Washington game.

Anybody who knows anything about Rob Gronkowski already knows about the Washington game, but I’ll talk about it anyways. In short, this game is what happens when a team sees that choice I was talking about above, and decides to get beaten by Gronk instead of by Wes Welker.

The first touch of this game is the one that leads every Gronk highlight reel. I don’t have the rights to show NFL footage here, but you know the one. The one where he makes a diving catch, gets up, and dares any Washington player to tackle him as he stumbles all the way to the 11 yard line. It’s truly one of the best plays you will ever see. If you somehow haven’t seen it before, load up any Gronk highlight reel. It won’t take you long to find this play. Of course because this is Rob Gronkowski he also caps off this drive with a touchdown the very play after, blanketed but still open, in typical Gronk style.

There’s an additional 50 yard catch in this game, and there’s also a brief insight into the mentality of Rob Gronkowski that I’d like to talk about. You see, right near the end of the first half Rob breaks wide open in the end zone, and Tom Brady misses him. He throws the ball at Rob’s feet from five yards out. In no way was this a catchable ball, but you never would’ve believed that from his body language.

He stands up not looking like he and the Patriots just been cost an easy touchdown due to their QB’s inaccuracy (a trend that will become common among non-Gronkowski players as Tom gets older and his accuracy wanes big time), but looking like he somehow did something wrong, as if there was anything he could’ve done to catch the ball. This is a minor thing, but it’s the flip side of the personality ‘issues’ I was bringing up earlier.

Perhaps if the greatest Tight End of all time was not wired like Rob Gronkowski, he would’ve made a stink about being missed open like this (something that’s happened a lot more than once with Tom Brady at QB, accuracy was never what he did well in the 2010s). Make enough of these stinks, and you’ve created a rift in the locker room.

Think of Terrell Owens in SF or Philadelphia. Think of Randy Moss in Minnesota or Oakland. Think of Antonio Brown anywhere. Those are just the top of the league examples. Think of a lot of great receivers with inaccurate QBs. These things can happen, and are constantly happening in the NFL. Don’t think they don’t. That they don’t and never did in New England in the 2010s is just another benefit to having Rob Gronkowski that my fancy numbers can’t quantify for you.

This game is nearly over, but one more highlight is at 12:14 of the third, where Gronk catches and scores a 37 yard touchdown despite being held like nobody’s business by Ryan Kerrigan. At this, the Skins decide they’re not going to let Gronk beat them anymore, and he’s double teamed a lot for the whole rest of this game. Coincidentally, at this point Aaron Hernandez and Wes Welker set to killing Washington.

In the end, this is a 34-27 win. Gronk did not get a single touch (or target) beyond the first play of the fourth quarter, but he didn’t need to. He’d already caught six balls for 160 yards and two more touchdowns. He spent the fourth quarter helping Welker and Hernandez get 85 yards apiece of their own and scoring and winning.

Needless to say, when you choose to let Gronk beat you instead of Wes, and try to cover Rob with a linebacker, this is what happens. I think I can understand now why teams elect to just take their chances with Wes, because this is one of the best games any TE has ever had. It’s an absolutely exceptional game, and certainly the best of Rob’s season.

It came at a great time too, because these 160 yards brought him up to 1088 through 13 games. With Jimmy Graham sitting at 1101, that means the yardage gap that at one point was 273 yards in favour of Jimmy is now entirely gone. This is a straight fight between both players. Three games to 1290.

In week 15 in Denver Gronk is not needed all that much, as the Patriots take the easy win over Tim Tebow and the Broncos 41-23, with Rob getting just five targets and 53 yards, and instead Aaron Hernandez going off with his best game of the season. Week 16 is just a little bit different than that.

Gronk does not get a catch until the Patriots are down 10-0 at home against Miami, and it’s not until after half that anything real gets going. The first play of the second half is a 22 yard catch and run from Gronk leading to the eventual field goal that finally gets the Patriots on the scoreboard down 17-3, but there is no further direct impact until New England has already tied the game at 17. Again, there’s a reason why Welker and Aaron Hernandez are going so hard. There’s no direct impact from Gronk and there doesn’t have to be to keep the Patriot offence rolling successfully.

This touch is when the Patriots are backed up on their own two yard line, and they go to our man for a 20 yard gain to get their backs away from the wall, before immediately going back to feeding Welker the ball. This is okay, and there are no more significant touches this entire game, as the Patriots do continuously inch their way down the field and inch their way to a 27-24 win on the back of 19 Wes Welker targets.

This was a very quiet seven catches for 78 yards. In fact, in terms of yards per target it’s one of the worst games we’ve seen this entire season, but once again, the field was opened up for Wes Welker, who finished this game with 138 yards. The Dolphins decided that Gronk was not going to beat them, and it nearly worked, as the Patriot offence was not doing very well here. Nevertheless, New England has won to move to 12-3. A round bye in the AFC is theirs, leaving them without much to play for in week 17, and we can focus on one final goal.

Coming into the final game of the season at home against Buffalo, Gronk has at last passed Jimmy in the race, but he hasn’t passed him by much. It’s 1219 yards to 1213. 1290 is within reach, and it’s exceedingly likely that both are going to break the record. The Patriots have virtually nothing left to play for. The Saints have plenty, which perhaps lends itself towards our man, because (spoiler alert) Jimmy Graham is not going to lead the Saints in targets in their game, but you better believe Gronk is going to lead the Patriots.

Both of these games are happening at the same time, but any fan with half an eye on both will see that Jimmy Graham isn’t going to get a touch (or even a target) for the entire first quarter. However, the story is much the same here, as our man gets just one as the Bills quickly pop out to a 21-0 lead. I don’t think anybody really cares about winning this game or not, but it’s just hard to force the ball to a Tight End. It’s not as easy as with an outside receiver.

There are two touches for Gronk in the two minute offence for a total of 21 yards, but that’s it. In combination with the one touch in the first quarter, it’s just 26 yards in the whole first half. With Jimmy Graham starting to cook down in Charlotte, this will not do. As a result, New England comes out of half trying to force the ball to Gronk. The first three pass targets are all towards him, but this just isn’t the game. Two fall incomplete, and this can’t continue.

When Jimmy catches a 29 yard ball down in Carolina, this is beginning to get nerve wracking, but a 17 yard touchdown pass near the end of the third quarter tightens things back up, but as of the start of the fourth quarters, neither man has broken the record.

As I’ve said, the result of this game is not terribly important, which may explain why the Patriots have overcome the 21-0 deficit and are now up 35-21 inside ten minutes and are still passing, but a 19 yard catch and run brings Gronk to 1288, just two yards short of the all time record.

This is where it gets into real nail biter territory, as this Patriot drive keeps grinding, and the run game keeps working, and it’s inside five minutes to go and there’s still no 1290 in New England. Jimmy has just broken the record down in Charlotte, but nobody cares who is the preliminary holder. We have to pass Jimmy before this game is over.

Gronk does catch the touchdown to cap off this extremely long drive and take himself over the 1290 mark to 1295, but that’s still not enough. Down in Charlotte the Saints have snuck in one pass in the middle of kneeling the clock out to get Jimmy 14 extra yards, but their game is now over. That means we need just a few more yards to get the all time record.

The Bills do not score, and the Patriots get the ball back up 49-21 with one minute left against a team with no timeouts, and this is where it’s definitively proven that if you think that football teams don’t care about individual achievements, you’re wrong.

If not for the circumstances, you would think the Patriots are trying to embarrass the Bills when they don’t kneel down, and instead they drop back pass up 28 with one minute left, but we all know that’s wrong. This is for history. This is to have the whole world remember that Rob Gronkowski is the best TE there’s ever been, not Jimmy Graham. On the surface, it’s the most meaningless thing in the world when the ball falls into Gronk’s hands, and it’s a 22 yard gain to take our man 17 yards past Jimmy Graham and rebreak the all time record, but this is the furthest thing from meaningless.

This is a record that hasn’t been touched since 1980. Nobody has gotten all that close either. Tony Gonzalez got painfully close on paper in 2004 by getting an unreasonable 33 targets in the final two games for a bad Chiefs team with nothing to play for, so I choose not to count that, meaning the closest anybody has gotten is Tony Gonzalez in 2000, who finished a full 87 yards off.

That’s all over now. Rob Gronkowski is the all time king of receiving yards by a TE, and that’s not the only thing he’s the all time king of. Let’s get into just how unbelievable this 2011 season truly was.

18 total touchdowns in a season remains the all time record for TEs. The closest anybody has come in the years since is Jimmy Graham with 16 in 2013. Other than that, nobody is better than 14. Not Kelce. Not Kittle. Not anybody. I suspect this record is going to stand for a long, long time.

The yardage record has been eclipsed several times in the ensuing years by Travis Kelce three times, and George Kittle and Mark Andrews once each, but I’ll make clear that these men drowned Gronk with volume, not effectiveness. Rob set his 1327 record with just 124 targets. Nobody has been able to beat it with less than 136. That’s George Kittle in 2018, and beyond that one season all the men above him have target figures in the 140s and 150s. This is not at all the same thing.

Let’s talk some more about Rob’s effectiveness.

Among all TEs in NFL history with at least 100 targets in a season (keep in mind data for targets only goes back to the 1990s, sorry Kellen Winslow), there is nobody better in terms of yards per target than Rob Gronkowski’s 10.70 in 2011. The only men that are even in the same ballpark with him are Rob Gronkowski again (10.32 in 2017), Antonio Gates (10.15 in 2009), and George Kittle (10.13 in 2018). That is it in terms of people with double digit yards per target on this many targets. Himself, Antonio Gates, and George Kittle.

No Tony Gonzalez. No Travis Kelce. No Shannon Sharpe. That leaves 2011 Rob Gronkowski with three peers, one of them being himself. If that’s not enough already to convince you that this was the greatest TE season of all time, let’s go even deeper.

According to Football Outsiders (I refuse to call them anything else), Rob Gronkowski was 47.1% better than the average Tight End per play in 2011. This is extraordinary and I’ll explain why. Rob had very big volume (125 targets) in 2011. Naturally, as you add more plays to your box score, your per play value is going to go down, because your QB isn’t strictly throwing you the ball when you’re open anymore. That’s why the leaders in per play value tend to be these guys that are just better than gimmicks but just worse than stars with about 50 or 60 targets on the season.

You are not supposed to lead the NFL in per play value with 125 targets. That just doesn’t make sense. Every season there’s some scrub with 40 targets all season who only gets the ball when he’s open who beats out the stars in terms of per play value. That’s just the nature of per play stats, but not when you’re dealing with the greatest Tight End of all time.

2011 Rob Gronkowski, in terms of how much above his peers he was, is virtually without peer in NFL history. I’m going to drastically widen the filter to see if we can find anybody else. Here is the list of every player who was at least 40 percent better than the league average TE per play in their season, with a real amount of targets (for this example, greater than 65):

1987 Mark Bavaro, 1994 Brent Jones, 2011 Rob Gronkowski, 2012 Rob Gronkowski, 2017 Rob Gronkowski, and that is everybody.

In terms of per play value (given a real amount of targets), there are only four people that can match 2011 Rob Gronkowski, and two of those people are Rob Gronkowski.

Do you get where I’m going here?

One more metric to really drive the point home. YAR, or Yards Above Replacement level, is a measure that takes the value over average per play I mentioned above and translates it into an amount of yards that the player got for your team above what the typical player could’ve gotten for you. For QBs, this number tends to be about 1500 for the best guys. This makes sense. You would expect Patrick Mahomes to throw for about 1500 more yards than a QB you can just get, given the same number of attempts.

For other positions, this number tends to be lower, way lower in the case of Tight Ends, because it tends to be a very replaceable position. A guy you can just get at any point with a late round pick or a pity contract tends not to be that much worse than the starter, but not in the case of 2011 Rob Gronkowski.

In 2011, Rob Gronkowski put up 469 YAR, meaning that the typical TE you can get off the street given the same 125 touches would’ve gotten 469 fewer yards than Rob Gronkowski did. That’s about a third of his total production you would lose by replacing him with another player.

If you don’t think 469 yards sounds like that many, then you seriously underestimate how difficult it is to generate value at the TE position. They just tend to not be put into the position to be able to help very much, and when they are they tend not to help that much. It’s an extremely rare thing to have a great TE in the NFL. That’s why it feels like we’re in a TE renaissance in the modern NFL when we have two (Kelce and Kittle) at the same time.

Imagine having two great WRs in the NFL and flipping out about it. It’d never happen. That’s the spot the TE position is in.

As such, providing this much more value to your team than a typical guy would is unheard of. Travis Kelce and his 398 YAR in 2020 is the only season that can get within 100 yards of this. Earlier in this article, I called 2010 Antonio Gates an ‘unstoppable force’ for 355. Shannon Sharpe never did better than 339. Tony Gonzalez topped out at 338, and these five men are the only ones in NFL history to make it as far as 330 yards better than the typical TE.

This is what I’m telling you. 2011 Gronkowski is so far above everybody else ever that it beggars belief. I don’t think there’s another position in football that after this many years of NFL history still has this clear of an answer as to what the best season in its history was.

1987 Bavaro and 2010 Gates better than Gronk on a per play basis, but couldn’t get the targets (Bavaro due to the 1987 strike, Gates due to injury). 2020 Travis Kelce has a lot of total value (still vastly less than Gronk), but took 20 more targets to get what he has. No season can combine per play value and total value like this one, which is why this is (by far) the best season any TE has ever had, bar none.

When you hear about the 2011 Patriots, all the talk you hear is about how ‘Tom Brady dragged the league’s 31st ranked defence to a Super Bowl. #GOAT.” Nobody mentions why he was able to do so. The reason he was able to do that is because he had the best TE there’s ever been opening up the field for Wes Welker and for Aaron Hernandez, and making Tom’s job very easy. In addition, nobody mentions the reason the Patriots lost the 2011 Super Bowl, which is that Rob Gronkowski broke his ankle in the AFC Championship game, and couldn’t really play in that game (he was there, but he was really bad and probably shouldn’t have been playing).

Make no mistake. This season is not underrated. In fact, it’s slightly overrated. The NFL rated this the eighth best season by any receiver in the 2010s when they made their end of decade list. This is not too big of a reach. I have it 17th (the only TE in the top 50).

With that being said, just because people in general don’t understand the lack of value in the TE position doesn’t mean you get the privilege of forgetting about this season. No it’s not the eighth best season of the 2010s, but it’s a whale of a story, and it’s irrefutable proof that we still can have new GOATs in this age of seemingly all narratives and records being set in stone.

A meathead from New York who spent his free time watching SpongeBob cartoons, who fell in the Draft because of back surgery, and who knew very little about how to be an NFL TE walked onto an NFL field, and from almost his first moments on it was the best TE the NFL had ever seen, and possibly ever will see. He was never able to get back to that level afterwards, but something about this story is just so captivating. What are the odds of all of these happenings being the same person.

But they were, and don’t you forget it.

Don’t you forget Rob Gronkowski’s Year.