Patriots' Rob Gronkowski on NFL: 'Abusing your body isn't what your brain wants'

ATLANTA, Jan. 31 (UPI) New England Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski opened up about the physicality of the NFL when asked about his future in the league.

"Gronk" has been asked repeatedly about his possible retirement in the days leading up to Super Bowl LIII. He has been able to dodge the question by not giving a concrete answer -- and Wednesday was no different.

"Yes, no, maybe so," Gronkowski said.

Gronkowski stands at 6-foot-6 and weighs 265 pounds. The four-time All-Pro punishes would-be-tacklers on a weekly basis each NFL season. But "Gronk" also has taken a beating during his nine-year tenure in the league.

The two-time Super Bowl champion is constantly on the injury report, dealing with back issues, concussions, thigh bruises, bruised lungs, knee sprains, hamstring pulls and more.

"The season's a grind. It's up and down," Gronkowski said. "I'm not going to lie and sit here and say every week is the best. Not at all. You go up, you go down. You can take some serious hits. To tell you the truth, just try and imagine getting hit all the time and trying to be where you want to be every day in life. I

"t's tough, it's difficult. To take hits to the thigh, take hits to your head. Abusing your body isn't what your brain wants. When your body is abused, it can bring down your mood. You've got to be able to deal with that, too, throughout the season. You gotta be able to deal with that in the games."

Gronkowski said that "no one" realizes the grind NFL palyers go through and everyone expects players to be "wide awake" every day.

"It's like 'yo, I just took 50 hits to my head' -- or not to my head, but I'm saying I just took 50 collisions, and then like the next day everyone wants you to be up," he said. "They want practice full speed, next week they want the game to be full speed, but they don't understand sometimes what players are going through with their bodies, with their minds.

"That's why I've been saying you see a shift in players in games where people are down the whole game, and then you see, all of a sudden, the next week it's like 'how did this team just go from one switch to the other?'"

The 29-year-old superstar has missed 29 games in the last seven years. He hasn't played a full season since 2011. He is a free agent after the 2019 season.