Rob Gronkowski won three Super Bowls with the New England Patriots, and he still says leaving them was the best move of his career. Patriots fans may not love the reasoning. The former tight end looked back on his move to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers during an interview on Craig Melvin’s “Glass Half Full” podcast.

Gronkowski was blunt about whether he has any regrets.

“No regrets. No regrets at all. Can you regret winning another Super Bowl? It was actually the best scenario, and it was the best thing that ever happened to my career, going to Tampa Bay. It really was,” Gronkowski said on the podcast.

“I mean, that’s a bold statement for a guy that won 3 Super Bowls with the Pats, but it was the best way to finish it off, to top it off.”

Rob Gronkowski retired in March 2019 after nine seasons with the Patriots, but returned a year later. Brady was still an active player at the time, and with the Patriots too, until he left for Tampa Bay in 2020. Gronkowski’s absence was tough for Pats fans, but his return might have soured them further.

In April 2020, New England traded him and a seventh-round pick to Tampa Bay for a fourth-rounder. That put him back with Tom Brady. Rob Gronkowski said in 2021, via NBC Sports Boston, that there had been some talk between the two before he unretired.

“It wasn’t anything like, ‘Hey Rob I want you to come back, come to Tampa with me.’ It was over a little bit of time,” the former TE said. “… [Brady] hit me up and was like, ‘Would you come down?’ And I was like, ‘I’ve been waiting for you. I’ve been waiting for you to make a move.’ It’s just been over a series of just talks. It’s just an unbelievable story. There’s a lot more conversations that went down but we’re just going to keep them between us.”

But Brady was not the only reason. Gronkowski explained that he wanted a team that was not a rival of the Patriots, because staying in the AFC East would feel wrong:

“I don’t want to, like, go to, like, Miami or the Jets or something. That would be weird. Like, I have too much love for New England.”

Florida had other perks. Gronkowski’s mom lived there, and the ease with which she could attend games and he could visit her on his time off was a big appeal, he told Ellen DeGeneres. But the football made sense too.

“My body was feeling pretty good. The team was solid. They were 7 and 9. They just needed a, you know, a couple things to get them over the hump, and dude, I pulled the trigger.”

Tampa Bay went 7-9 in 2019, then went 11-5 in 2020, the first year with Brady and Gronkowski. The Bucs then made a clean sweep in the playoffs and beat the Kansas City Chiefs 31-9 in Super Bowl LV.

Rob Gronkowski was a big part of the win. He caught six passes for 67 yards and two first-half touchdowns, both from Brady. Gronkowski called that 2020 team the best he ever played on, per the 4th And South podcast.

That is a big claim. Gronkowski had Mike Evans, Chris Godwin, Antonio Brown, and Leonard Fournette around him in Tampa. He’d played for the Patriots for the previous five seasons of his career and even won Super Bowls with them, but they still didn’t make the cut.

Gronkowski re-signed with Tampa Bay on a one-year deal, and he retired again in June 2022. In the end, he spent two seasons with the Bucs and won four titles in total.

Although he considers Tampa Bay the best move of his career, it remains to be seen whether Patriots fans will let such an admission slide.