Written by Ryan Wilson at CBS Sports.com
LaVar Ball has taken a break from making ridiculous basketball-related claims to offer up his scouting report on Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski. Specifically: That Gronk, considered one of the league’s most dynamic players, would have been no match for Ball when he was at his athletic prime.
“Gronkowski can’t hang with me back in my heyday,” Ball said recently during an appearance on “The Really Big Show” on ESPN Radio.
This is ludicrous, of course. Partly because of the source, but also because that source was a fringe NFL talent, landing on the Jets’ practice squad as a defensive end in 1994 and then as a tight end in 1995. He eventually ended up playing for the London Monarchs of NFL Europe where he was tight end Michael Titley’s backup.
“If he’d had a couple opportunities and some more time, I think he could have made something of himself football-wise,” Titley told BleacherReports.com’s Natalie Weiner this spring about Ball’s stint in London.
But former Monarchs cornerback Kenny McEntyre remembers Ball, professional football player, differently.
“Man, he’s talking all that junk — and he was garbage,” McEntyre told Weiner. “Personally, I think the most athletic people in the world are basketball players, and he actually wasn’t a bad athlete, to be honest with you. But he was no comparison to what his kids are — let’s just put it like that.”
To recap: Ball played football for a couple years and while he was an impressive athlete he wasn’t very good. Meanwhile, Gronk is an otherworldly talent — both in terms of athleticism and as a playmaker. The difference, to hear Ball tell it? Opportunity.
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