After months of speculation, and with a year’s experience in 2013 to (probably) help in the decision making, Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski took the extraordinary measure of breaking his own status to the media on Monday. He announced that he’s “good to go” and will be playing the season opener against Miami on Sunday, September 7th. In the process, Gronkowski even got a brief education in breaking news, before making a sly reference to last year’s celebrated “As the Gronk Turns.”

Asked a slightly odd question (“How does it feel to break some news?”), Gronkowski seemed a little thrown off, before eventually asking ESPN’s Mike Reiss if he “broke it.” Almost in unison, Patriots media responded to Gronkowski with who had, in actuality, broken the story: “You did!”

Gronkowski went on to eventually make a remark that was clever to an underrated degree. He noted how definitive the reporting is, coming from the player itself.

“Now that you don’t got no unnamed source up there, Mike,” Gronkowski said, drawing laughter from the crowd. It was obviously a joke (and probably not targeted at Reiss with any sincerity), but it was a slight jab at some of the largely erroneous updates on Gronkowski’s return last season (which we eventually made a segment out of, called “As the Gronk Turns.”) In all fairness to Reiss, he wasn’t one of the reporters who overstated reports about Gronkowski starting from “unnamed sources,” so no harm done.

Here’s the audio clip, which can be heard in its entirety on Patriots.com:

Screenshot via Patriots.com