He never wanted to be the next Gronk. Darnell Washington might look the part. At 6'8" and nearly 260 pounds, the 17-year-old tight end superprospect is actually already two inches taller than Rob Gronkowski. But Gronk was never his guy.
"He's LeBron," says David Hill, an assistant football coach at Desert Pines High and Washington's mentor. "He has that athletic ability. He has that canvas." Indeed, Washington has a build seemingly constructed for the NBA, complementing his height and weight with an 85-inch wingspan—roughly the same as LeBron James. But LeBron wasn't his guy either.
He used to want to be the next Julio Jones.