FOXBORO — There’s been so much news swirling around Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski in recent days with regard to his playing status now as well as in the future. One report even suggested teammates were starting to resent the fact he had been practicing for weeks but not playing.

One family member told the Herald today that people and unnamed sources who are casting stones just don’t know the whole story.

“All I can say is Robbie is dying to play. He wants to get out there,” said Diane Gronkowski, mother of the Patriots’ tight end. “He’s doing what he has to do to get back playing. He doesn’t like it. He wants to play. It really bothers him that he’s not playing.”

Diane Gronkowski indicated her son wanted to play as far back as Week 2, when the team medical staff thought he was ready to go. But Gronk hasn’t gotten back on the field because he doesn’t want to end up in the same place he was last season — in an operating room.

“The same people who criticize him for not coming back are the same people who say he came back too soon last time,” she said. “It is what it is. Rob is the only one who can make this decision. Anybody else who has a comment to make positively or negatively aren’t Rob. They aren’t in his shoes. They didn’t go through the surgeries that he went through. You can say what you want to say. Unless you’ve stood in someone’s shoes, you don’t really know the whole story.

“When they go through four arm surgeries, a back surgery, and a foot surgery in a year and a half, then they can make the comments,” she went on. “After the third (forearm) surgery, Robbie said, ‘I’m never doing this again.’ And weeks later, he’s back in for the fourth one. So he doesn’t want to go back where he was and start all over again. It wasn’t fun. It was so discouraging.”

While Gronk’s mom acknowledged that she wasn’t completely in the loop with his dad and agent Drew Rosenhaus, she said her son does inform her what’s going on and provides her with the basics.

She said he was doing special exercises and was on a new diet to get him better prepared for the season. Gronk has apparently cut pizza and fried chicken out of his diet, all in trying to get himself ready.

“When he comes back, he wants to be 100 percent and pick up where he left off,” she said. “Do people know what he’s been doing, what he’s been eating? He’s just been so disciplined since his surgery. He’s eating healthy foods, organic foods. If he didn’t want to play again, why would he be doing all that?”

Does Mrs. Gronk think her son would in fact return this season?

“Oh yeah, he’ll be back,” she said. “It’s hard for people to be patient. It’s hard for him to be patient. He wants to be out there. That’s a definite. He’d love to be out there. He would have loved to have been out there two or three or four weeks ago.”

Asked about a divide between the team and her son, Diane Gronkowski hoped that wasn’t the case.

“I don’t know anything about that. But, obviously, (his return) is an issue,” she said. “But he’ll be back. It’ll work out in the end; it always does.”