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Gronkowski Talks Bye Week, Coming Back From Injury And More On Gresh & Zo

BOSTON (CBS) - Tight end Rob Gronkowski joined 98.5 The Sports Hub's Gresh & Zolak show Tuesday afternoon to talk some Patriots!

Coming off a knee injury that kept him out of the playoffs last season, the fifth-year pro is playing as good as he ever has over the past five games -- all wins for the Patriots, which is probably not a coincidence.

Gronkowski's Patriots head into the bye week 7-2 and in sole possession of first place in the AFC after beating the Denver Broncos 43-21 on Sunday in front of the home crowd.

"I'm feeling pretty good right now. Definitely feeling pretty healthy, but you could always use a bye week," said Gronkowski in the midst of downing his second protein shake of the day. "There's always bumps and bruises. You got swelling in some areas you wouldn't expect just from being hit all over the place. It's good to go into a bye week, get healthy, get right, get prepared and get stronger."

In working his way back from injury, Gronkowski said the mental part played as big a role as the physical part during his recovery. Gronkowski was on an admitted "pitch count" to start the season, but now it's all systems go for No. 87.

"Mentally and physically you can't just hop right back in off of injury and go out there and be 100 percent and start getting hit everywhere. I felt like we did a great process going into the season, building up throughout the games and I feel great where I'm at now. I feel ready to go at anytime. We just did a great job doing that, and I'm very happy where I'm at now."

The guys would be remiss if they didn't ask Gronkowski about his incredible one-handed catch early in the fourth quarter, a reception Tom Brady called one of the best he's ever seen.

"We definitely don't work on that in practice," Gronk joked. "We work on catching the ball properly in practice with two hands and stuff. That was just a natural reaction from where the ball was thrown to. Whenever I see the ball in the air you definitely wanna go up and try to make a play. That was a chance where the ball was in the air, I just went up for it and happened to put my one hand up and grabbed it. It was pretty nice."

Pretty nice, indeed.

Watch it again below:

Gronkowski was one of the more vocal Patriots to stick up for Tom Brady earlier in the season, when all the talk around the region was how much the quarterback has declined.

"At that time of the year, that week, you couldn't get away from it. If it was your friends telling you, if it was turning on the TV, reading the news or whatever it was -- sometimes it can get to you, but we just wanted to go out and prove to everyone that we weren't gone," said Gronkowski. "Everything just wasn't going right but we were sticking together. We just needed a little more time to get together as a team and start executing."

After that, the interview kind of went off the rails a little bit.

Okay, it went off the rails a lot.

When asked, Gronkowski said "there's competition there" between Julian Edelman and Jimmy Garoppolo as to who's the best looking player on the team, and there's "no doubt about it" that the ladies find Garoppolo dreamy.

Listen below to the full interview!

MORE PATRIOTS COVERAGE FROM CBS BOSTON

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