Show of hands: Rob Gronkowski's 'oven mitts' steal focus leading up to Super Bowl
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How Rob Gronkowski's ankle feels this evening may have the single greatest impact on Super Bowl XLVI.
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INDIANAPOLIS -- The legend of New England Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski includes the most scrutinized left ankle in town, a nickname befitting a caveman and hands as large as a cereal box. Or a laptop. Or a legal pad. Put them all together and it helps explain to some degree why his was the overriding story line this week.
From thumb to pinkie, Gronkowski's hands measure 103/4 inches -- nearly as long as a football.
"Probably about two of mine," Patriots running back BenJarvus Green-Ellis said. "I mean, you've got to see those things. They're like oven mitts."
Those oven mitts helped Gronkowski catch 17 touchdown passes during the regular season -- a record for tight ends -- and three more in the playoffs, all in a divisional-round victory against Denver. On his first touchdown that game, Gronkowski, 6 feet 6 inches and 265 pounds, dived in the back left corner of the end zone and used his right hand to tip the ball to himself, cradling it as he fell. It was typical Gronk, teammates said.
"Dude makes big catches with big hands," safety Patrick Chung said.
Everything about Gronkowski seems oversize, from feet to personality. But his hands, sheathed in white gloves ("makes them look twice as big," guard Logan Mankins said), are his most recognizable feature. At media day Tuesday, a television reporter asked Gronkowski if he could lean forward and compare hand sizes. His were roughly twice as big. Then she asked if he could name the cast from "Jersey Shore." He obliged.
Dana Dimel, his position coach at the University of Arizona, said Gronkowski, 22, looked like a "big puppy dog out there with those huge paws and feet flopping around." The Patriots' tight ends coach, Brian Ferentz, likened Gronkowski to a Labrador retriever.
"You throw him the ball, he runs and catches the ball, he brings the ball back," Ferentz said. "You throw him another ball, he comes back, he runs into other dogs, he laughs, he thinks it's funny. He brings the ball back again, and you throw it until he gets tired and doesn't want to do it anymore."
The summer before his senior year at Woodland Hills High School, in 2006, Gronkowski visited Arizona. There Dimel, after shaking Gronkowski's hand for the first time, said he thought to himself, "OK, he'll be able to snatch some passes out there." By nature of their position, tight ends make the bulk of their receptions in the middle of the field, where safeties and linebackers lurk. To succeed in those congested areas, they are taught to reach out and grab the ball with their thumbs together, not to catch it in their chest. Dimel called that skill "shaping the football," and Gronkowski, a natural, practiced it all the time.
First Published February 5, 2012 12:00 am
