See Gronk and Hailey's Ridiculous GQ Photo Shoot

Rule #1: All You Need Are the Clothes on Your Back (or Not Even That)

In the off-season he is a nomad. By early April he's already been traveling for five weeks. He takes a single suitcase. (Plus a SpongeBob backpack, but that's pretty small.) Inside that suitcase he keeps a smaller suitcase, a little leather valise. Like a suitcase matryoshka doll. That way he can use the big one or the small one depending on how long he'll be gone. And what he packs inside those suitcases is: almost nothing. Twelve pairs of boxer briefs, a single suit, three pairs of shorts, a couple of tank tops. A couple, as in: two. And during these months—the period of time stretching from the Patriots' loss in the playoffs in January until April 18, the start of the team's workout program—Rob Gronkowski brings his two tank tops and 12 pairs of underpants wherever the day may take him. “I just go with the flow,” he tells me, “day by day, week by week.”

He was invited to a film premiere in L.A. Tomorrow he's going to Phoenix for a charity event. He went to California to film a Nickelodeon show called Crashletes. If you've spent any time doing Google Image searches for Rob Gronkowski shirtless and grinding on people (with his dad), then you probably know that for three days in February he turned a Norwegian Cruise Line vessel into something called “Gronk's Party Ship.” But Rob has been operating largely out of Miami Beach this off-season. Mostly due to its awesomeness—weather, training facilities, nightclubs, people walking around largely naked, etc. It seemed that if one wanted to gather up the tricks, rules, and insights to live like Rob Gronkowski, the person with perhaps the most public, unburdened, absurd sense of fun in America, the best place to do it would be Miami. So we made a plan to do everything a person should do on summer vacation: walk around Miami Beach, meet some models, take our shirts off, eat lots of lean protein, do tequila shots, breakdance, and go totally HAM on some cardio.

We'd planned to meet this morning in the lobby of the Fontainebleau hotel, and when I arrive I can see him from a hundred yards away. There, standing by the taxi stand, a human body in perfect proportion, only at 134 percent human size. (That number is scientifically accurate.) Six feet six inches tall, 262 pounds, hairless torso, shoulders that are like eight inches front to back. He looks kind of like a giant baby—a super-ripped giant baby. I can't explain it, really. Except to say that he has the smile of a baby, the innocent look. To see that face is to hear him say: I mean no harm. Even if I throttle you to the turf and shatter your clavicle, I mean no malice.

“Come on,” Rob says to me. “We're gonna walk over to Katz's apartment.”

Rule #2: Be Super Lovable

Swim trunks, $90, and watch, Emporio Armani | On her: Bikini by Missoni | Necklace vintage.

At this very moment, 27-year-old Rob Gronkowski is probably the most beloved player in the National Football League. People who would argue with this statement are, statistically speaking, mostly just sanctimonious Aaron Rodgers fans. Sure, you can tell me that more people bought Tom Brady gear in the past year than that of any other player; but I'm not talking about what's a cool jersey, I'm talking about lovableness. Still, you might be wondering why he's so beloved. It's true that he is very good at football. He is a giant who is absurdly coordinated and superhumanly strong, can block linebackers out of their cleats, and also possesses the softest of fingertips on which to catch passes. Not only is he probably the best tight end in football; he's more valuable to the team than being good at his position. Just watch the final minutes of last season's AFC Championship game, especially the Patriots' final touchdown play, when he stands in the midst of a double team and seems to Matrix a chute of stillness into which Tom Brady can easily deliver a pass, thus giving the Patriots a chance to go to the Super Bowl (which they flubbed). Rob Gronkowski the football player is like a giant concrete pier (for footballs) in the midst of a storm (of people trying to tackle him), if the giant concrete pier could run a four-seven 40-yard dash. He can will winning conditions in almost any game situation.

But just being good at football isn't why he's so beloved. Because Cam Newton is probably better, if we're being honest. It's something in his baby-like human essence. It's his infectious, irrepressible nature. It's his meathead exuberance. It's that he brought his own party bus to one of the Patriots' Super Bowl parades. It's that he says he loves getting hit, and he's convincing about it. It's that he loves practice. And if you made him swim across a frozen lake before practice, he'd be like, Fuck yeah, let's go HAM on that hypothermia, bro! (Here's what Gronk said to me about lifting weights: “The importance of lifting weights is it kind of makes me who I am.”) It's that he uses the term “Party Rock”—which comes from an LMFAO song—to delineate between people who just like to go to clubs and people who really know how to bring it. It's that you can't look at the guy without thinking you should be yelling “Wooooooo!” at each other before you do a shot/get a lap dance/jump out of an airplane. It's that he seems to exist in a permanent shower of champagne spray and nightclub-foam-party foam, all without ever seeming like a creepy douchebag (that weird time he lap-danced a female Fox correspondent notwithstanding—but that moment seemed so scripted that I have to blame Fox). People love him the way they loved Entourage, only he's somehow had the Jeremy Piven surgically removed.