Rob Gronkowski appears to be changing his stance a bit on his former head coach’s polarizing love life.
Bill Belichick and Jordon Hudson’s relationship has been anything but smooth sailing when it comes to its perception from the public eye — and Gronkowski is now taking note on how far it all strays from what Belichick preached in his nine years coaching the legendary tight end.
“You know, and in the back of your head, too, you’re just thinking to yourself as well, ‘When you were on the Patriots, the whole goal was to eliminate all the distractions that can possibly happen while you’re on the team,’” Gronkowski said in an interview with 98.5 The Sports Hub.
“And don’t bring those distractions to the team and in the locker room, and we’re just looking down at the program in North Carolina and it feels like there are just distractions 24/7 down there,” he added. “There’s no football talk as well.”
This is a different stance than what Gronkowski preached just about two weeks ago when he and fellow former New England Patriot Julian Edeleman spoke on the “Dudes on Dudes” podcast.
The two cut Hudson some slack after her brutal moment where she cut a CBS interviewer’s question to Belichick about how the couple met. The former teammates noted how Hudson was simply playing the role of a publicist, not an ornery girlfriend.
“People are giving an unfair reality of what’s going on,” Edelman argued on the podcast. “Because she was jumping into that conversation during the interview just like any PR person would jump in when there’s an unnecessary question that probably [they] didn’t go over in the pre-production meeting.”
“When you look at this situation and you say, ‘This is his girlfriend jumping in,’ I think that’s unfair,” Edelman added. “I think she’s actually working with coach Belichick in the professional world.”
This sentiment is backed up by the fact that UNC released a statement on Friday saying that Hudson will “manage all activities related to Coach Belichick’s personal brand outside of his responsibilities for Carolina Football and the University.”
As Gronkowski now notes, though, Belichick’s relationship with Hudson has been a distraction — to say the least.
So much so, that UNC is closing in on hiring a former Chicago Bears PR chief to work alongside Belichick in handling the debacle that is his relationship with the 24-year-old.
Perhaps then, Hudson will find herself less in the spotlight of micro-managing Belichick’s public moves and more so in the supportive girlfriend role.