Bill Belichick: No Patriots receiver was as quick as Deion Branch
Branch's 20-yard shuttle was quicker than Julian Edelman and Wes Welker's.
Deion Branch was slippery in his seven years with the Patriots. But that elusiveness is a trait that’s shown up among a great number of Patriots wide and slot receivers.
When asked if rookie Malcolm Mitchell possesses a similar quickness, Bill Belichick took a trip down memory lane to discuss Branch’s foot speed.
“It’s hard to really compare anybody to Branch,” Belichick said Sunday morning before practice. “Branch had a rare quickness. I mean, what’d he run, like a three-seven short-shuttle? You just don’t see that. Deion was very, very quick and very smart. I’m not saying there aren’t other smart receivers, but Deion was really a smart receiver and very, very quick. We’ve had quick guys like Troy [Brown], and Julian [Edelman], and Wes [Welker], guys like that. But it wasn’t Deion, they didn’t have Deion’s kind of quickness.”
At the NFL combine in 2009, Edelman ran a 3.91 20-yard short shuttle. Welker ran a 4.01 20-yard short shuttle during his Pro Day in 2004. During this offseason, Mitchell ran a 4.34 20-yard shuttle. As Belchick recalled, Branch’s was better than all of them. He ran a 3.76 ahead of the 2002 NFL Draft, when he was a Patriots second-round selection.
“They may have more size than Deion, they were probably a little better after the catch in terms of bulk, and strength, and breaking tackles and all that, but Deion’s short space quickness was pretty good,” Belichick said. “I don’t think we’ve had a guy with his kind of quickness. I don’t know that too many other teams have. They might have been quick but not with all of the other things, but when you put Deion together with his hands, his instincts – which were very good – his overall intelligence and his short space quickness. He was not the biggest guy, not the strongest guy but he was hard to cover. His quickness was tough to cover. It’d be hard to compare anybody to him because he was pretty unique with the level of quickness that he had.”
That quickness helped Branch yield 6,644 receiving yards and 39 touchdowns during his 12-year career with the Patriots.
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