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USATSI

When Tom Brady announced his retirement on Feb. 1, his decision to call it quits definitely surprised a lot of people and one of those people was his longtime former teammate Rob Gronkowski

Gronk spent 11 seasons in the NFL and Brady was his quarterback for each of those seasons. During an interview with The Athletic this week, Gronk explained why he was shocked that Brady decided to walk away from the game after 23 seasons. 

"I would just say I was shocked because I would say he still has some left in the tank," Gronk said. "There's no doubt about that. I felt like Tom could play until 50 years old. ... But he chose to hang it up at 45, and I'm proud of him. I'm proud to be his teammate. I'm proud of everything he has accomplished. I'm just happy for him, whatever he chooses to do next."

Right now, it's not clear what Brady is going to do next. Although he has a 10-year contract waiting for him at Fox, he revealed this week that he doesn't plan on starting his job as a broadcaster until the fall of 2024 at the earliest, which means he's about to have a gap year ... or maybe not. 

One thing Brady could do is unretire for a second time and return to football. Gronk was asked about the possibility of a second Brady comeback and he gave an interesting answer. 

"Tom is not reopening that door. I don't know. Maybe he is," Gronk said. 

CBSSports.com's Will Brinson is convinced that Brady is going to return to the NFL at some point this year and he outlined his reasons why here

If Brady doesn't return to football, he'll eventually be joining Gronk at Fox, and it sounds like Gronk would love the idea of doing a "ManningCast" type show with his former teammate.  

"That's definitely a possibility for sure, being with Tom for so long and now we're going to be at Fox together," Gronk said. "There really hasn't been any plans or anything or any talks about it, but that definitely could be a possibility. We could banter back and forth in some way, somehow, maybe do a couple promos together or whatever it is."

Brady and Gronk were quite the tandem on the field and it wouldn't be surprising if they ended up being quite tandem on television together.