Last week, Julian Edelman of the New England Patriots retired from pro football after an amazing 13 year career with the only team he knew. Edelman started his football career at a Quarterback at a Southern California Junior college and then transferred to Kent State University in Ohio to play the same position. He was making headlines at Kent State at QB, however the prospect of a 5’9″ QB from a Missouri Valley Conference school breaking through in the pros was slim to none. Yet, the scouts on the Patriots staff saw something, and the story of how they developed relationships with the coaches at the school, and evaluated how Edelman could possibly play other positions in the pros is a story I absolutely love. From Mike Reiss at ESPN:
But Julian was a heck of a football player, and you don’t want to discard really good football players. So you think outside the box and try to get creative, try to find a role for him. There were reasons you thought it could work. He had incredible short-area quickness. He had really good reactive cutting ability. He had great football instincts in terms of feeling people — spatial awareness, things of that nature. Extremely tough with the ball in this hands.
“Digging into the background part of it, he was extremely competitive. The fact he was a California [Junior College] kid and assimilated at a school in the Rust Belt, that’s not easy to do. He’d come out to practice and B.S. with the wideouts, so you could tell he was comfortable with that position group, and that made you feel good — that he was one of the guys.”
Nagy recalled that Edelman just wanted to play football, and bought into the idea of a position switch in the pros — which doesn’t always happen with prospects. The Patriots had December scouting meetings, and then their standard cross-check process in February, with Pioli assigning Nagy wide receivers as his cross-check position. Through that process, Edelman landed on the team’s draft board.
Mike Reiss
Wether he makes the NFL Hall of Fame is up for vigorous debate and that decision and evaluation is way beyond my influence. However, this life long Patriots fan has nothing but respect and happy memories of all that he did to help the team win several Super Bowl championships. He was dependable, tough as nails, and made some phenomenal plays during his career, none more important that the catch in the photo above that he made against the Falcons in SB LII.