Rob Gronkowski did not need a box-score explosion to make up his mind about Chicago Bears tight end Colston Loveland.
Asked on a new episode of “Hot Ones” to name a tight end who could have a monster season, the former New England Patriots and Tampa Bay Buccaneers star went straight to the second-year Bears pass catcher.
“I’m going to go with Colston Loveland,” Gronkowski said. “He has the skills, he has the attributes. He’s going to be a phenomenal tight end.”
The comment landed a day after Loveland walked out of a record-setting opener with nothing in the receiving column. Chicago rolled past the Carolina Panthers 59-37 on Sunday in the highest-scoring Week 1 game in NFL history, and Loveland still finished without a catch.
That empty line does not tell the whole story. Loveland played 65 snaps and ran 32 routes, according to tracking data cited by A to Z Sports, leading every Bears pass catcher in routes. He was on the field. He was getting looks. The ball just never found him.
Cole Kmet, the veteran sharing the tight end room, had the better stat sheet with two catches for 35 yards and a touchdown. Loveland was targeted a handful of times and came away empty.
Quarterback Caleb Williams took the blame for at least one of those misses.
“There was a few passes that I left out there,” Williams said. “There was one that should have been a touchdown to Colston that I missed. Threw it a little bit too far in front of him.”
Gronkowski is not a casual observer at the position. He finished his career with 621 receptions for 9,286 yards and 92 touchdowns and is widely expected to land in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. When he says a young tight end has the traits, people around the league tend to listen.
Loveland already showed some of those traits as a rookie. Selected 10th overall in the 2025 draft out of Michigan, he finished last season with 58 catches for 713 yards and six touchdowns, leading Chicago in receptions and receiving yards. The production arrived late. After a quiet first half of the year, he became one of Williams’ most reliable options down the stretch.
The postseason only strengthened the comparison Gronkowski is now making. Loveland caught eight passes for 137 yards in the Bears’ wild-card win over Green Bay. He became just the second tight end in NFL history, at age 22 or younger, to post a playoff game with at least 10 targets and 130 receiving yards. The first was Gronkowski.
Williams has been saying similar things for months. After the first practice of training camp, the quarterback did not hedge.
“He can be the best tight end in the league,” Williams said. He later added that Loveland can run every route, block, and disguise looks in coach Ben Johnson’s offense.
At 6-foot-6 and 241 pounds, Loveland is built like a problem for linebackers and a mismatch for most safeties. Linebacker Devin Bush, who sees him every day in practice, put it in plainer language.
“Man, he’s one of those guys, he has a way of just catching that ball, dawg,” Bush said. “He’s really good at tracking the ball, he’s really good at stemming his routes and getting to his points and like I said, bringing that ball in. He has a huge catch radius.”
Chicago does not have to force-feed him. Johnson’s offense already has Williams, Rome Odunze, Luther Burden III, Kmet and a running game that can keep defenses honest. Week 1 was a reminder that the ball can go anywhere. It was also a reminder that unused chances do not last forever in this scheme.
Loveland has talked about how much he wants to keep building with Williams.
“Caleb is so talented,” Loveland said earlier this offseason. “But he is also so passionate about this. He cares so much. And you see it regularly; that he’d do anything to get that next win. How would you not want to ride with a guy like that and catch footballs from someone like that?”
One quiet Sunday will not decide a season. Gronkowski is betting there will not be many more like it. The Bears host Minnesota next, and the tight end who spent Week 1 running routes without a reward now has a Hall of Fame-caliber endorsement hanging over the rest of his year.
If that prediction holds, the next empty stat line may be a long time coming.
