Rob Gronkowski partying smarter this year

New England Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski isn’t having any less fun than before, but he’s partying smarter as he matures.

The New England Patriots offense is a different animal with Rob Gronkowski, who has quickly emerged as one of the NFL‘s best tight ends, if not its overall best player at the position. They sport one of the league’s most potent offenses with Gronkowski and they sport Tom Brady on an island without him.

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Of course, the only beast we know as it pertains to the one they call Gronk is his reputation as the NFL’s resident party animal. The man we’ve seen shirtless nearly as often as we have spiking a football has changed his ways without changing who he is. As a result, the Patriots are once again kings of the AFC.

MMQB writes that Gronkowski bought a bus from a church in Long Island and converted it into what his brother Dan calls “Just a normal party bus, nothing too crazy.”

The party bus dynamic seems like an all-too-Gronk move, but consider it a step up from the days when he was being photographed shirtless at a night club. At 25, Gronk still has plenty of party left in him and given the $53 million contract he signed with the Patriots in 2012, he certainly has the means to throw a wicked bash.

Instead of throwing a party for everyone to see and dissect though, Rob Gronkowski is limiting the visibility of his good times and thus eliminating outside chatter.

“You can still be having fun,” Gronk tells MMQB, “but maybe it’s in more of a setting where people don’t know what’s going on.”

To make sure he remains safe as well, Gronkowski hired his friend Robert Goon to be the official driver of the party bus, among other duties. The party can remain immobile or hit the nearest club without a hitch, but when you’re a millionaire in your party bus with friends, who needs a club when the wrath of Bill Belichick stands waiting for you the next morning?

Gronk will still be Gronk. He’ll block the daylights out of a linebacker on one play, then jump over a safety for a touchdown grab on the next. And when it’s all said and done, he’ll celebrate as he chooses. These days though, he’s leaving that part up to the imagination of the public.

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