Gronk Reveals How Kelce and Mahomes Are Better Than Him and Brady

ROB GRONKOWSKI AND Julian Edelman are ready to get messy. The former New England Patriots teammates have spent five of the last thirteen February’s together in the Super Bowl, dirtying themselves on football fields to rewrite the place in the history books. Ahead of Super Bowl LVIII, the retired greats might be in a mess of trouble with football fans over their thoughts on Kansas City Chiefs Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce’s legacy.

The battle between recency bias and nostalgia delusion is why sports talk shows and sports fans have been debating LeBron James vs Michael Jordan for years. Gronkowski and future Hall of Famer QB Tom Brady won four Super Bowls together en route to being recognized as the greatest quarterback-tight end pairing in NFL history. That’s starting to change now that they haven’t played a game together in over two years, while Mahomes and Kelce have become Super Bowl mainstays and shattered a few of Gronk and Brady’s records. Naturally, the question has begun being asked: Are Mahomes and Kelce the greatest QB-TE duo of all time?

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If you ask Edelman, he’s not willing to concede victory to the Chiefs duo just yet. ” Not yet. [Gronk and Brady] have more [Super Bowl rings],” Edelman says. “They’re doing some crazy stuff. But not yet.” Gronk, on the other hand, has a more nuanced opinion, pointing to how the game of football is different now than when he and Brady played. But even he couldn’t deny that a duo that recently broke his and Brady’s record for most postseason touchdowns may be better in some sense.

“They’ve broken our record in the playoffs, and to break that record, they have to be doing something right,” Gronkowski explains. “If you look at the numbers, I would say, yes, they are a better pairing, including the playoffs and regular season.”

The pair are keeping revisionism away from their legacies, but that doesn’t mean they’re not open to reimagining their careers. They’ve both been on all-time great Patriots teams, including the New England Patriots All-2010s and All-Dynasty teams. For two men who have hailed the greatness of chicken wings and Bounty paper towels, they already know which of their teammates they think would devour their favorite Super Bowl food as part of their All-Wing team. Gronk is certain former teammate Logan Mankins “would knock down about 40 to 50 wings per sitting if he needs to,” while Edelman knows there’s one guy who would be essential to any team looking to make a delicious mess.

“Tom Brady would be the Bounty paper roll. He would clean up the mess made by a lot of the little hooligans that would be on that team—the [Danny] Amendolas, the Gronks, the [Matthew] Slaters.”

Between legacy talk and chicken wing champions, Edelman and Gronk are giving sports fans a lot to digest as they watch Mahomes and Kelce go for their third Super Bowl title in four seasons as the Chiefs take on the San Francisco 49ers.

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