From Super Bowls to studio shows: Behind-the-scenes with burgeoning media star Julian Edelman on ‘Fox NFL Kickoff’
This is the 38-year-old's second year as part of the breezy pre-pregame show.
LOS ANGELES — In this ongoing tedious epilogue to the Patriots’ two-decade dynasty, much has happened that the franchise’s fans may never have anticipated.
Robert Kraft’s transparent post-excellence desperation for affirmation and credit. Tom Brady, rookie game analyst struggling to bring color to a role that demands it. Bill Belichick, NFL history and strategy raconteur, and holder of more media gigs than everyone other than maybe Ryan Seacrest.
Here’s one more striking development: Julian Edelman, quintessential red, white, and blue Patriot of the second phase of the dynasty, has gone green.
He’s dressed in green, actually, right down to his Kelly-shaded socks, which would not look out of place as part of Celtics mascot Lucky’s game-day wardrobe.
Edelman is dressed this way because — here comes another surprise — he’s paying homage to, of all teams, the Jets on “Fox NFL Kickoff,” the network’s hourlong Sunday morning warm-up act for the long-entrenched “Fox NFL Sunday” pregame show.
This is the 38-year-old Edelman’s second year as part of the breezy pre-pregame show, which also features host Charissa Thompson, ex-player analysts Charles Woodson and Michael Vick, and information guy Peter Schrager.
(On occasional Sundays, but not this one, Rob Gronkowski stops by. He has a recurring segment with his former Patriots teammate. Its title? “The Fox Bros.” Few segments in television history have had a more fitting name.)
On set, Edelman remains the bro-eist of bros, all energy and chatter and random dance moves. During rehearsal, a full run-through of the show immediately before it goes live at 11 a.m. (8 a.m. on the West Coast), he keeps two coffees — one iced, one hot — on the studio desk. Watching him, you suspect he gives the coffee a jolt rather than the other way around.
“He walks into a room and immediately there’s an energy there,” says Thompson in a conversation that afternoon. “You’re going to hear a great story, or you’re going to make fun of him. He’s great at self-deprecation, he doesn’t mind being the butt of a joke.”
While Thompson stands on a staircase running through an intro, Woodson, a teammate of Brady’s at Michigan, has a question for Edelman.
“How’d my man Brady do last week?” Woodson asks.
“A lot better,” says Edelman. “A lot better. Can’t wait to see him.”
Keeping it fun
Jeremy Mennell, the show’s producer, says he tries to add a fun element each week to differentiate “Fox NFL Kickoff” from other studio programs. On this Sunday, the Rams’ mariachi band is on set, in homage to Hispanic Heritage Month.
The presence of a live band on set adds another moving piece to a program that, just by its nature as a live show, already has to navigate all sorts of potential circumstances. “And as you might expect,” Mennell deadpanned later, “a mariachi band is something of a variable.”
To Mennell’s expectation and relief, save for a moment early in the broadcast when a misplaced graphic briefly put the camaraderie in the control room on pause, the show goes off without a hitch.
The mariachi band hits all the right notes (playing Fox’s familiar NFL theme, of course), and its presence allows Edelman to ad-lib a charmingly silly moment that confirms not only his fit on this show, but suggests that he’d be an ideal addition to “Fox NFL Sunday” should any of its longtime analysts — including Terry Bradshaw, Jimmy Johnson, Howie Long, and Michael Strahan — retire in the years ahead.
“You see how good Matthew Stafford can throw it?” Edelman says, mentioning the Rams quarterback while attempting to acknowledge that the band aced its time on set. “They hit that thing right in the tuba.”
Edelman, seeming to realize that it would require a special kind of musical fusion for a mariachi band to feature a tuba, adds, “or a trumpet.”
He raises his hands as if he were catching a football, then bursts into an impromptu round of … air trumpet.
The control room breaks out in laughter. “What was that?” says Mennell.
“A tuba? We don’t even know this guy anymore,” says Vick.
Oh, but we do, at least in New England. Turns out his green getup doesn’t belie his true colors.
Early in the program, Edelman explains that he was in attendance at MetLife Stadium for the Jets’ 24-3 dismantling of the Patriots on “Thursday Night Football” in Week 3, and acknowledges how well Aaron Rodgers played.
But like a true Patriot lifer, he cannot resist a parting dig at the Jets.
“To see the hope in [Jets fans’] eyes, I’ve never seen it,” he says. “I’ve only seen devastation my whole career.”
For the love of the game
Well before a lingering knee injury forced his retirement from the NFL in April 2021, Edelman had begun building a media portfolio — not so much to intentionally set himself up for a second career, but more so because he enjoyed it.
“It was just fun,” he says, hanging out in a small lounge at the studio after the show before heading off to watch the later games with Bradshaw, Long, and the rest of the cast of “Fox NFL Sunday.”
“I was the first one on Instagram in the locker room, way back in 2009. No one had Instagram, no one had anything. That was this little millennial kid doing that.
“I said no to 90 percent of the things that we could have done. Just because I didn’t want to get the call. From Bill [Belichick] or Berj [Najarian, Belichick’s righthand man]. I understood, the more you put yourself out there, the better you had better [expletive] play.”
During his 12-year playing career — during which he caught 620 passes, won three Super Bowls, and was named MVP of Super Bowl LIII — he cofounded a production company, Coast Productions, which developed a couple of documentaries, including one on his own career, titled “Julian Edelman: 100%”, which aired on Showtime.
Since retiring, he’s been part of “Inside the NFL” — for which he was nominated for a Sports Emmy — and launched a podcast titled “Games with Names” in which football personalities and celebrities discuss a memorable game in NFL lore. In late August, the podcast put on a live version of the show at the Wilbur Theatre, an experience Edelman called “truly awesome.”
“It’s important to me to get outside of that box, to get uncomfortable willingly,” he said. “I’ve got to have that rep, and I think that’s going to help me in this career so much.”
Mennell says Fox Sports targeted Edelman when spots opened up on “NFL Kickoff” after the 2022 season. (Sean Payton, who had spent a year with the show, left to take the Broncos’ head coaching job; Dave Wannstedt also departed.)
“He’s one of those rare guys, you just want to hear what he has to say,” said Mennell. “He’s having fun, doesn’t hesitate to say what he thinks, and you want to hang out with him.”
There was an adjustment period, however. “Inside the NFL” was taped, and Edelman was, well, green when it came to the mechanics of live television. Mennell chuckles at the recollection of a scene on the show last year.
“Outside of Charissa and Schrager, who have the host mentality, I try very hard not to get in the ears of people when they’re talking,” he says.
“One time last year, my finger just slipped and I hit his button to talk to him by accident, and you just see Julian looking around side to side, like he’d just poked his head up from a hole or something. It tripped him up, but rather than looking like an error, it became something we could all laugh at.”
Adds Thompson: “A couple of shows into his first season, he said to me, ‘I know, I’ve got to do better.’
“I appreciated that because he could have just come in like, ‘I’m Julian Edelman, Super Bowl MVP, won three Super Bowls,’ and been unwilling to learn. I’ve worked with a few like that, and he wasn’t like that at all.”
Putting in the work
That mind-set carries over from Edelman’s time with the Patriots. He’s putting in the time to do the job the right way, including hiring a personal broadcast coach.
On Sundays, a different kind of game day for him now, he wakes up at 4 a.m. Pacific time, takes a cold plunge, picks up that iced coffee he definitely doesn’t need, and arrives at the sprawling Fox lot (with its massive murals of Homer Simpson, Lucille Ball, and Luke Skywalker dueling Darth Vader among other icons real, imagined, and animated) by 5 a.m. for a 5:15 production meeting.
“He is always prepared, which is why he’s going to keep getting better and better at this,” says Mennell. “He reads over what I send him on a Wednesday night [regarding thoughts for Sunday’s show], we talk it out Thursday, and come Saturday, he’s already TV-ready.”
Edelman says preparation isn’t just a longstanding habit, but a way to calm jangling nerves. “Those minutes before the show starts, it actually reminds me of the first time I played in an NFL game,” he said. “You’re sitting there, having absolutely no [expletive] idea how it’s going to go.”
As much as he enjoys talking about football when Sunday morning comes down, he acknowledges missing being on the field. “I’m starting to miss it more and more, the better my body feels,” said Edelman, who still comes back to Boston every six weeks or so. “The first year out, I hated football. You’re mentally and emotionally and physically spent.
“But as my body has gotten healed up these last couple of years, I’ll go out on the soccer field with my daughter, kick the ball with her, I’m like, ‘Man, I feel good, still got it.’ ” He laughs. “And then you wake up the next day and you’re like, ‘Ah, I don’t got it.’ ”
He pauses, and waves his arms in a broad gesture, as if addressing the whole Fox Sports operation. “So I’m really grateful, bro,” he says, “that I get to do this.”
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