Patriots’ Rob Gronkowski mum on NFL return, could be eyeing more business ventures
New England Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski was mum on whether he would return next season after his team lost Super Bowl LII to the Philadelphia Eagles.
"I'm definitely going to look at my future, for sure," Gronkowski said during a press conference Sunday. "I'm going to sit down in the next couple of weeks and see where I'm at."
Gronkowski, who has suffered injuries throughout his eight seasons, most recently suffered from a concussion during an illegal helmet-to-helmet hit during the conference championship against the Jacksonville Jaguars. Doctors cleared him a few days before the big game.
The 28-year-old signed a contract during the offseason that allowed him to make up to $10.7 million if he reached certain goals, which he did this season. He is one of highest-paid tight ends in the NFL.
Gronk advises younger players to always have a backup plan, no matter what.
“Sometimes, I see players come in and they’re all about football and only football, and then boom!” Gronkowski told FOX Business in November.
He said that the average NFL career is about three and a half years and that his brothers Dan and Chris played for five and four seasons, respectively.
“It’s always good to go in with another plan [and] to have something behind you [that's] not just football, no matter what level you are,” he said.
That is one of the reasons the Patriots tight end, affectionately known as “Gronk,” is making a preliminary move in the startup world by partnering with the entrepreneur Jeremy Greene in a new tech hologram app called Mojiit.
“The chemistry that we have is like the chemistry Tom Brady and I have on the field,” Gronkowski said, when referring to his relationship with Greene.
Greene, a tech entrepreneur who built and launched the social media app PingTank and in 2015 sold it to Facebook, created Mojiit, an app that allows users to create a 3D animation of themselves to send to their friends, because it’s exactly where the industry is headed.
“The idea really speaks for itself, and it’s fun,” Greene told FOX Business. “We just closed a sizable round [$1.2 million], and we did that in less than a month and a half. I also got Steve Wozniak, the co-founder of Apple involved, which is amazing.”
The app, which is free for users, will get a majority of its revenue from micro purchases.
“If you’re wearing Yeezys in your avatar and I touch them, not only can I buy them from my app but I can also buy them from e-commerce and have them delivered directly to my house,” Greene said. “That is where we’re headed. There is a much bigger play here.”
Though Gronkowski wouldn’t comment on whether he invested in Mojiit, he did say that the idea of investing in companies is something that he feels comfortable with in his career. In his 2015 book, “It’s Good to Be Gronk,” he told readers that he has yet to spend any of the money associated with his NFL contract. That’s something he says now still holds true in “a way.”