Julian Edelman is feeling betrayed after Rob Gronkowski trade

After the New England Patriots traded Rob Gronkowski to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to play with Tom Brady, Julian Edelman must be feeling a bit betrayed.

The New England Patriots are in the middle of an offseason like no other.

As if it wasn’t already hard enough to part ways with Tom Brady last month, the Patriots then traded away the rights to Rob Gronkowski so that he could come back from his NFL hiatus to play with his good friend and the greatest quarterback of all time down in Tampa Bay with the Buccaneers.

Over the course of playing together for nine years in New England, Brady and Gronkowski have connected on 79 career touchdowns — the second-most by any quarterback/tight end duo behind Philip Rivers and Antonio Gates.

It’s also worth mentioning that Gronkowski has played every game of his career with Brady throwing him the ball, so it should come as no surprise that he wants to continue playing with him again as he comes out of retirement for another run with his best bud.

When you think of Brady and Gronkowski playing together again, there is another name that becomes synonymous in addition … Julian Edelman.

Edelman and Brady have a strong connection and friendship. Edelman has often been considered to be Brady’s “little brother.” They have put in endless amounts of work together, pushing one another in order to be the best players they can be en route to winning multiple Super Bowls.

The two former teammates also spend a great amount of time together off of the field and are what I would consider to be best friends.

At the end of February, Brady and Edelman went to the UNC vs Syracuse game and sat courtside together. He could have been just joking around with his friend, but Edelman did say then that “He [Brady] is coming back.”

As I said, he could have just been joking around with Brady, or he could have really been under the assumption that Brady was going to return to the Patriots (which Brady was seemingly annoyed about).

With both Brady and Gronkowski now out of New England and playing for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, it makes you wonder how Edelman is feeling throughout all of this. At a greater time, they were like the Three Musketeers in New England. Now Edelman is the lone soldier on what appears to be a rebuilding team.

Whether Edelman fully understands the business part of the NFL or not, he has an obvious feeling of betrayal from Brady, seeing as he reportedly un-followed him from his social media accounts when he first heard of the news, according to 98.5TheSportsHub’s Ty Anderson.

Perhaps Edelman feels left out and doesn’t see the light at the end of the tunnel with the New England Patriots’ current situation — which would be bothersome to any player who has been on a successful team for their entire career.

Edelman is the piece that keeps the offense moving. He is the answer to how the New England Patriots gameplan and run their plays. Out of frustration with the team, would Edelman ever underperform to prove his point or lobby himself to be traded to another team? Probably not, but he won’t stay silent or hide his frustrations, either, you would think.

In time, I’m sure that the relationship between Brady, Gronkowski, and Edelman will eventually go back to normal. It is definitely going to be even more different to see both Brady and Gronk wearing Buccaneer jerseys and not playing on the same team with Edelman in 2020 though.