AP

There’s a reasonable chance that as soon as Rob Gronkowski wakes up, he’s going to have a headache.

That’s probably going to be nothing compared to the pain in his legs after last night’s Super Bowl LIII win.

Gronkowski had to get attention from the team’s athletic training staff after he was sandwiched by a pair of Rams defenders in the second quarter. The hit left his thigh swollen and misshapen, so gross that he actually let Tom Curran of NBC Sports Boston to touch it to confirm.

“No, it’s about the same as other ones,” Gronkowski said. “But I can barely walk!”

Asked what it would look like Monday, he repled: “It will be red . . . black and blue. But at least I don’t have to worry about it now.”

We knew his back and hamstring had given him problems this season, but this was a new (and acute) one, which he admitted he needed time to recover from.

Earlier this week, Gronkowski was in an introspective mood, as he weighs the lingering pain he stays in to play a game he obviously loves.

“Try and imagine getting hit all the time and trying to be where you want to be every day in life,” he said. “It’s tough, it’s difficult. To take hits to the thigh, take hits to your head. Abusing your body isn’t what your brain wants. When your body is abused, it can bring down your mood. You’ve got to be able to deal with that, too, throughout the season.

“No one realizes that, and everyone expects us players to be wide awake every single day, and it’s like ‘Yo, I just took 50 collisions, and then like the next day everyone wants you to be up’. They want practice full speed, next week they want the game to be full speed, but they don’t understand sometimes what players are going through with their bodies, with their minds.”

But today he doesn’t have to do anything but enjoy.