FOXBOROUGH, Mass.  — The Super Bowl champion New England Patriots are back at work, and things are already a lot quieter.

Rob Gronkowski has retired, and the locker room is a more serious place without the fun-loving tight end who once declared himself the life of the party — in garbled Spanish, no less.

“There’s only one Gronk,” running back James White said on Wednesday, when the Patriots reported for training camp. “You can’t replace that personality. He’s a great football player, but you’ve got to play with who’s out here.”

A four-time All-Pro who was too fast for linebackers to cover and too big for defensive backs to bring down, the 6-foot-6, 265-pound Gronkowski caught 521 passes for 7,861 yards and 79 touchdowns in an injury-plagued nine-year career. He helped the Patriots reach the Super Bowl five times, winning three rings.

But he was also a larger-than-life personality known for emphatically spiking the ball after a touchdown catch; he once tried to do the same with an opponent, explaining after drawing a penalty “I took him and threw him out of the club.”

Gronk’s offseason partying — thrice starting with the Super Bowl championship parade — was a staple of social media, and he once announced in the locker room after a win: “Yo soy Fiesta!”

“Rob was one-of-a-kind, obviously, on the field, with what he’s able to do as a player. We see that each and every week over the last nine years,” special teams captain Matthew Slater said.

“His fun-loving spirit and personality, and his child-like joy that he brought each and every day to the workplace. His humility — just a genuine human being — certainly, those things are hard to come by in today’s time, so we’ll miss that.”

But Gronkowski last played a full, 16-game season in 2011, with injuries to his back, knee, ankle and arm limiting his ability to stay on the field.

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