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Rob Gronkowski gets the SI cover treatment

Rob Gronkowski on the cover of Sports Illustrated. (Walter Iooss Jr./Sports Illustrated)

The Sports Illustrated cover jinx is just a myth, right? We sure hope so after seeing Rob Gronkowski’s face on the front of this week’s issue. The story, titled “The Last Happy Man,” portrays the Pats tight end as an affable, somewhat dumb guy born to play football. “If there is such a thing as a patron saint of meatheads, it is Gronk,” writes Chris Ballard, who goes on to call the 6-foot-6, 265-pound pass catcher an “idiot, jester, hero, foil, buffoon and prodigy, the embodiment of a pathetic bro-centric culture…He is Andy Kaufman in the body of Dolph Lundgren.” So what do we actually learn about the player to whom the Pats just gave a six-year, $54 million contract? Not a lot, actually, except that his family copyrighted “Yo Soy Fiesta,” one of the nonsensical phrases coined by Gronk.