Even if you’re not the biggest football fan, you’ve got to love the story of a good old-fashioned American bromance. For the recent history of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, which has seen the team achieve their first playoff appearance since 2007, per ESPN, is, at heart, exactly that.

The recent successes that the Buccaneers have enjoyed have in part been due to two signings that have together heralded a change in the team’s fortune: the world-renowned veteran quarterback Tom Brady and skilled tight end, and until recently, frustrated talent Rob Gronkowski, both formerly of the New England Patriots. Brady’s 20-year career with the Patriots saw him lead the team to nine Super Bowls, winning six, was saluted by the team owners, the Kraft family, and had billboards calling him “the greatest of all time,” according to CBS Boston. Tom Brady, 43, spent a total of nine years playing alongside his 31-year-old teammate, known affectionately as “Gronk,” forming what Sportscasting described as “one of the most unstoppable tandems in the NFL. Gronkowski himself earned three Super Bowl titles with the Patriots before shocking the world of football with the announcement of his early retirement in 2018, citing the toll that painful injuries were having on his mental health. “I want to be clear to my fans. I needed to recover. I was not in a good place. Football was bringing me down, and I didn’t like it. I was losing that joy in life,” Gronkowski said at the time, per ESPN. But thanks to his friendship with Brady, Gronk’s return to football wasn’t far away.

Tom Brady was key to bringing Rob Gronkowski to the Buccaneers

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