Bill Belichick credits a sportswriter for helping him find Julian Edelman
"At one point, he said to me, ‘A kid you might want to take a look at is this quarterback out of Kent State.'"
It turns out that Bill Belichick’s relationship with the media helped lead his team to discover its most recent Super Bowl MVP.
Though the Patriots’ coach is often seen as surly with reporters, Belichick offered a post-Super Bowl LIII anecdote on how that isn’t always true. Julian Edelman, MVP of Sunday’s Super Bowl (making 10 catches for 141 yards), was first scouted by the Patriots on a tip from a columnist.
Rick Gosselin, formerly of the Dallas Morning News, was Belichick’s original source on the quarterback from Kent State.
“It’s kind of interesting,” Belichick explained. “I’ve got to give Rick Gosselin credit on that one for getting us started. I talked to Rick — as you know, Rick followed the draft very closely — and at one point, he said to me, ‘A kid you might want to take a look at is this quarterback out of Kent State. I don’t think he can play quarterback [in the NFL], but I’ve heard he’s a pretty good player.'”
This led Belichick and the Patriots to take a look at Edelman.
“So we kind of got going on him a little bit, and we were like, ‘OK, what would we do with Julian? Is he a receiver? Is he a punt returner? Is he a defensive back? Is he maybe a guy that just can play multiple positions in the kicking game?’ So we went out and worked him out.”
“How many times did we work you out?” Belichick asked Edelman. “Two? So we sent one coach up there. And then we were like, ‘Well, all right, let’s send someone else up there, because we weren’t really sure what to do with him.”
Ultimately, Edelman arrived in New England as an unheralded seventh-round pick. But he acclimated to a variety of tasks that have defined him as a player in the NFL.
“So, as it turned out, he came to the Patriots and caught passes, which he hadn’t done before,” added Belichick, “returned kicks, which he hadn’t done before, and played defense, which he hadn’t done before, in addition to covering kicks and all the other things in special teams.”
Of the film review of the Edelman’s college career, Belichick said that a particular game — in challenging circumstances — stuck out to the Patriots’ coach.
“I’d say the game — and we’ve talked about this — the game that really impressed me the most in watching Julian was the Ohio State game,” said Belichick. “He didn’t have a lot of blocking, and they were getting killed by Ohio State, but what you saw in that game was how competitive he was, how hard he was to tackle, and how tough he was.”
“Even though it was three, four touchdowns, whatever it was they were behind by, he played the game with an intensity honestly was hard for them to handle,” Belichick concluded. “They had a difficult time with him. So you could see the competitiveness on film and in the workouts.”
