Rob Gronkowski’s NFL career touched greatness in New England thanks to his insane work ethic… Those hard and long practice sessions, and the habit of studying tape for hours before game days. But away from the field, the four-time Super Bowl champion had a much more laid-back obsession…
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No, we are not talking about his rather famous inclination for partying. This obsession involved headsets, controllers, and endless waves of the undead.
Gronk admitted on Dudes on Dudes that during his playing days, he was an obsessive gamer. And his battleground of choice was Call of Duty: Zombies.
The fast-paced survival mode game was first introduced in World at War back in 2009. The game drops players into chaotic maps filled with endless waves of zombies. And Gronkowski was so obsessed with it that he would wait for the day’s team meeting to end so he could get home.
“I used to run home right after team meetings,” Gronk said with a laugh. “Practice ends at like 2:30, and then you go into meetings from 3:30 to 4:30 to watch film. We’d be cut from the stadium at 4:30, and I’d literally run home so I could get on the couch with Nasty Nate Dog.”
Once home, the schedule was almost as disciplined as the things he did in Foxborough. “We would put on Zombies and play from 4:35 — the moment I got home — to like 10:30 at night, and then go to bed and do it again the next day,” Gronk revealed.
Co-host and former Patriots teammate, Julian Edelman, who was patiently hearing the story, couldn’t help but laugh. And he summed it up perfectly: “Yeah, that’s NFL life.”
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Edelman is bang on because Gronkowski is far from the only player who turns to the console after practice. Today’s NFL locker rooms are filled with gamers — from Patrick Mahomes, who dives into The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, to Tyreek Hill and Justin Fields, who have stayed loyal to Modern Warfare 2. Jayden Daniels and Bryce Young split their time between Fortnite and Minecraft, while Dak Prescott prefers the slow pace of Red Dead Redemption 2.
The modern NFL grind can be physically exhausting, mentally draining, and emotionally isolating, the pressure magnified by social media and analysts’ ever-growing love for hot takes. So, for players like Gronkowski, gaming was a reset button. This has been proven scientifically as well.
Perhaps it’s his love for video games that helped Gronk to remain one of the chillest players in the league: A man who could dominate a Sunday afternoon, and then joke around with his teammates and friends like nothing happened.
For Gronkowski, whether it was the end zone or Call of Duty: Zombies, the mission was always the same… Win, laugh, and do it all over again tomorrow.
