In the NFL, being healthy and fit is part of the job description. Every player is expected to show up ready, taped, and tough, because unlike most professions, there’s no such thing as an ordinary “sick day.”
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If a player falls ill, the team’s medical staff steps in to evaluate them, determine their fitness to practice, and decide whether they need to be placed on the injury report. So, in simple words, calling in sick without evidence raises eyebrows.
That’s why what Rob Gronkowski and Julian Edelman revealed on Dudes on Dudes this week feels both hilarious and brutally honest. When Edelman asked his co-host how a sick day in the NFL actually works, Gronk didn’t hesitate: “I mean, you really, truly have to be sick in order to be sent home,” he said.
Edelman added that, back in their Patriots days, the staff didn’t exactly send players home to rest. “They used to just hold you in the trainer’s room and say, ‘Here, here’s some fluids,’ and you had to sit there by yourself,” he humorously recalled.
Rob Gronkowski took this anecdote a step further by painting a scene that perfectly sums up how unforgiving the system can be. “You had to, like, kind of prove it… I had, like, food poisoning, and I went in and was like, ‘Yo, Jim, come look in the toilet. I puked,’” he said.
Julian Edelman cut in laughing — “So did Jim Whalen [Longtime Patriots Athletic Trainer] come watch you shit?” — before Gronk doubled down:
“I would say, ‘Come here. Come watch me just to prove it… He’d be like, ‘Oh, I believe you.’ And I’d be like, ‘No, come freaking watch me diarrhea and throw up at the same time, Jimbo. Like, I’m sick.’”
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As crude as it sounds, Rob Gronkowski’s story is rooted in how things function in the league. In the NFL, a “sick day” isn’t earned by a phone call but by physical proof.
Unless a team doctor explicitly rules a player unfit, the expectation is to show up, hydrate, and gut it out. Hence, players who call in sick without medical justification can lose pay or damage their standing in the locker room, where toughness is currency.
Even when illness does strike, teams aren’t required to make it public unless it limits participation. As NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy clarified, “Unless the player misses practice or is limited in any way, they would not need to be listed on the injury report.”
That means even a quarterback like Patrick Mahomes can play through flu-like symptoms without anyone outside the building knowing unless he physically can’t take the field.
So when Rob Gronkowski said, “That’s the only way you got sick days in the NFL,” he was perhaps reminding that in the league’s no-excuses culture, being sick is just another test to prove you belong.
