This is the best example of what I was trying to talk about a few pages ago. Some bodies are made in a way that injuries happen more often, despite the same trauma. The best players in the world have the best physiology. What this means to me is that the way NFL football players' bodies move, a hit that isn't anything to them would literally put 98% of this board in the hospital, with either broken bones, muscle contusions, or torn ligaments. They are just made better and a good portion of that is training but a lot of it is the luck of the draw with their genes.I think part of the confusion may be the need to go all in on skill vs attribute. Let's talk about me, for example because that's always an awesome subject.
I broke my nose about a dozen times boxing. Part of that was skill: early on my defense sucked and I'd get hit flush. Part of that was an attribute: some fighters have flat noses that never really break. I have the other kind.
I also had 3 hand surgeries. That was an attribute. On the third surgery, the dr. told me that my forearm bone (ulna or the other guy) was a fraction of a millimeter longer than normal so that when I turned over my punches and made contact it would fray the tendon or ligament. After he shaved the bone, I had far fewer issues.
It is just the way they are made, the way their limbs stretch under stress, and the way they bounce back from, or off of, trauma. And some are prone to injury relative to their peers for the same hits.
This is not a knock on Gronk, he's a monster. But he's got some kind of flaw where these fluke things end up taking him off the field. Whereas, these fluke things don't effect Jason Witten, Tony Gonzalez, or Antonio Gates. Maybe they don't play as hard and they avoid all contact unless it's completely unavoidable.
But Gronk was a 2nd round pick because he was an injury question mark. And now he's 3 back surgeries deep. I'm worried for his health at this point, not whether or not he's going to play again.