Rob Gronkowski will be eligible for election to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2027, but he won’t have to wait that long to be inducted into one of his former team’s version.
The Patriots announced on Wednesday that Gronkowski has been elected to their Hall. He will be inducted into the Hall later this year.
“Rob Gronkowski’s performance on the field was extraordinary, but it was his infectious energy and consistently positive presence that truly set him apart,” Patriots owner Robert Kraft said in a statement. “He always brightened everyone’s day. He earned the respect of coaches and teammates through his work ethic, preparation and unselfish approach, while redefining what it meant to play his position. Rob became a fan favorite almost immediately and remained the standard at tight end for nearly a decade. We look forward to celebrating his induction into the Patriots Hall of Fame and, in time, the Pro Football Hall of Fame.”
Gronkowski was a 2010 second-round pick for the Patriots and helped them win three Super Bowls before retiring after the 2018 season. He returned to play for the Buccaneers in 2020 and won another title before retiring again after the 2022 season.
Gronkowski had 521 catches for 7,861 yards and 79 touchdowns in New England. He is the franchise leader in career receiving touchdowns and ranks second in receiving yards.
Now that the NFL draft has come and gone, there’s one key date left on the league’s offseason schedule. Even if we don’t know what that date will be.
The schedule release is coming. In May. When in May, we don’t know.
Last year, the full regular-season schedule was released on Wednesday, May 14. In the preceding days, a handful of games were announced by the various broadcast partners.
That makes the week of May 11 the most likely target for the 2026 schedule release, as to the entire slate of 272 regular-season games.
Like every year, the “who” and the “where” of every game became known the moment the prior regular season ended. The formula is tied to division membership (six games), the AFC-NFC full-division rotation (as to eight games), and final finish in each team’s given division (three games). But the “when” remains a mystery, for all but two games.
To date, the league has announced that the Rams will “host” the 49ers in Melbourne on Thursday, September 10 (Friday, September 11 at the site of the game) and that the Cowboys will “host” the Ravens in Brazil on Sunday, September 27. As to the other 270 games, nothing has been announced.
The act of adding the “where” to the “who” and the “when” will be a major sports story, overshadowing the other major sports that are, you know, playing games. It’s another tangible example of the extent to which the NFL stands out in the American sports landscape.
We’ve suggested in the past that the league could, and perhaps should, make it a multi-day exercise, with the prime-time games unveiled on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of schedule-release week and the rest of the games announced on Thursday. Why not commandeer the full week, instead of taking over only one day?
The experience has now been supplemented by a competition among the teams to come up with the best and most creative schedule-release videos. Some teams do it better than others, with the Chargers typically having the most edgy and humorous offering. As a result, some teams have arguably pushed the limits, to the point where it makes sense for the league office to sign off on any videos that could become problematic once they debut.
That could be a particularly good idea this year, for any team that has the Patriots on the schedule. Especially the Chargers, who are indeed slated to host New England in 2026.
Patriots seventh-round draft pick Behren Morton is the new guy in New England’s quarterback room, but he’s not the young guy.
The 24-year-old Morton is older than the 23-year-old Drake Maye, and the two have known each other since they both went to the Elite 11 event as high school quarterbacks.
“We were Elite 11 finalists. We went to Tennessee,” Morton said, via MassLive.com. “I got to know him there. He’s a great dude. He’s a young guy that I can learn from. Obviously had a tremendous season last year. So getting to learn from him this year.”
Morton said he also wants to learn from Tommy DeVito, who at 27 is the old guy in the Patriots’ quarterback room. But Morton knows the quarterback room revolves around Maye, and Morton will do whatever he has to do to support the starter.
“I’m really looking forward to picking his brain about what he’s done in the league so far. He’s been very successful this last year. So I’m going to do whatever it takes,” Morton said. “If he needs a coffee from Starbucks, I’m there for Drake. Whatever he needs throughout this process, I’m here for him.”
Morton believes he’s going to help both Maye and DeVito as all three of them grow into their primes.
“I’m fired up to be there,” Morton said. “I’m a competitor. I’m going to elevate the room for sure. And I’m going to do whatever it takes to make this organization better.”
Morton is walking into a young quarterback room, but one where he can learn a lot.
The Mike Vrabel situation has dominated much of the attention being paid to the Patriots over the last few weeks, but tight end Hunter Henry said in a Tuesday press conference that the players have been focused on football while in the building for the last two weeks.
While that might provide a respite for what’s going on outside the walls, it also means a return to thoughts about the last time the team was on the field. That was a 29-13 loss to the Seahawks in a Super Bowl that felt like a bigger blowout than the score would indicate, which is likely part of the reason why Henry said that the loss is still a sore point for the team.
Henry also explained that he thinks that can be a positive because of the desire to avoid another ending like the one the team had in Santa Clara.
“I watched a little. It still stings, to be honest with you,” Henry said. “Obviously, we didn’t play to the capability that we wanted to play at all on the biggest stage, and that was very disappointing and hard to process for a while. Definitely has taken a while. It still stings, but I think that is good. That’s good that it stings. It’s good. It makes you want to work a little harder. To get all the way to the end and then not achieve it was hard. There was a lot of positives when you really step back from it and able to really look at the full picture. I mean, making it all the way there is obviously a blessing. It’s really, really hard to do. Obviously getting there was big, but we didn’t make it all the way.”
The 2026 season will be the first chance for the Patriots to show that they’ve built a sustainable winner rather than a team that flashed while playing a fourth-place schedule and seeing some other AFC contender’s chances deteriorate thanks to injuries and other reasons. History has examples in both directions and the answer in New England will help determine the way the conference stacks up beyond the coming season.
Elijah Mitchell, a running back whose promising rookie season in 2021 now feels like a distant memory, has been cut by the Patriots.
Mitchell was only with the Patriots briefly last season and never appeared in a game for them. The team announced it was cutting him on Tuesday.
A 2021 sixth-round draft pick of the 49ers, Mitchell looked tremendous as a rookie, totaling 1,100 yards from scrimmage in 11 games.
But in Week One of his second season, Mitchell suffered a knee injury that knocked him out for most of the year, and he has struggled to stay healthy since. He missed more time in 2023, missed the entire 2024 season with a hamstring injury, and then signed with the Chiefs last year and only played in one game before he was released.
Mitchell may be able to find some team willing to give him a shot on a 90-player training camp roster, but it’s fair to question whether he’ll ever play in the regular season again, as a player who once looked like he had a bright future deals with the harsh reality of how short NFL careers can be.
