The Loop
This was Gronk's greatest Patriots Parade performance yet
Maddie Meyer
Of all the slippery, slimy, cheating, conniving snakes slithering around Asterisk City, Massachusetts this week, Rob Gronkowski is probably the most likable. Sure, he has the IQ of a shoe, but that's part of the appeal. He's affable and relatable (as much as a professional football player dating a swimsuit model can be). He still believes lying gets you put in timeout and saves his allowance for LEGOs. The only headset he's ever tampered with is the pair he drops in the toilet once a month and when Belichick yelled at him for hanging out with Dr. Kevorkian, he actually listened. Most importantly, however, Gronk is the Super Bowl parade GOAT, which makes sense given his brain is just a jumble of confetti, Bud Light, and duck boats anyway. For years Gronk has been brightening Boston's seemingly annual celebration of meathead-on-meathead crime with his Joker grin and corn syrup-less chug-a-longs, and this year—his third and potentially last Patriots Parade—proved to be his greatest performance yet. TO THE HIGHLIGHTS!
Things began innocuously enough with dinner-party Gronk, torso covered, sipping wine from the bottle (GRONK ALWAYS BREAK GLASSES!).
Just like auntie at Thanksgiving, however, the chardonnay sparked a fire that became the inferno that is Gronk's natural parade state....
The Northeastern frat boys could hardly contain themselves.
At this early stage, Gronk's Hulk hands we're still in working order...
but that situation rapidly deteriorated, leading to even more CTE for ol' 87.
That, and the preceding decade of brain damage, then led to Gronk's 2019 coup de grace—and quite possibly the best moment in Super Bowl Parade history—in which Gronk, clad only in a neon security vest and backwards hat, feels up his girlfriend in front of thousands of red-faced corned beef hash fanatics before brandishing a container of delicious, nutritious Tide Pods out of seemingly nowhere, heaving it into the frothing maw of Patriots Nation with a climatic splat.
Enjoy retirement, you big, stupid oaf.