FOXBOROUGH, Mass. -- After a busy summer, Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski returned to the practice field for the first time since undergoing ankle surgery to repair damage suffered during the team’s AFC Championship Game victory over the Ravens.

Now three weeks into his return, the third-year pro sees improvement in his own game.

“Every day you’re going out there and you want to improve. From the beginning of the camp, to this day, I feel like I’ve improved a lot from where I started at,” he told reporters on Thursday. “It’s just great going out, competing against everyone. Going out there every single day you get the speed of the game down more, you get the chemistry down with the quarterbacks more and just overall you get better just being out there facing competition every day.”

After playing in the Patriots’ preseason opener on Thursday, Gronkowski sat out a string of three practices, working with members of the Patriots' athletic training staff alongside a group of injured players.

He came back on Wednesday, and is working to regain chemistry with his offensive teammates, and improve his conditioning.

“You definitely never want to miss any practices and obviously there’s always a setback when you miss a couple,” he continued. “You never want to and that’s the number one thing, to always get out there and practice and get your conditioning right and always have the chemistry with the offense.”

Though he was unable to take the field in recent days, Gronkowski has looked close to his old self when he has practiced, overwhelming defenders as both a receiver and blocker. It’s possible that the team has budgeted days off so as not to overuse his ankle during the preseason.

For now, the 23-year old looks primed to pick back up where he left off in 2011, during which defenses simply had no answers for he and tight end running mate Aaron Hernandez.