At some point during Sunday’s Super Bowl, New England receiver Julian Edelman will make a play that fills his fans with the kind joy and pride that normally would be reserved for an adopted son. An off-the-rack player taking over a plus-sized game tends to bring out that kind of affection.
Those on the other side, though, will consider him an annoyance of the highest order, a pest that no shoe can crush, no swatter can bring down. And the cry of, “Why can’t we stop that guy?” will ripple through Southern California.
Falcons fans know the feeling from Super Bowl LI. It was Edelman who made the obligatory impossible play during the Pats' game-tying drive against Atlanta in the last 150 seconds of regulation. Robert Alford tips the ball, and as it tumbles to earth, Edelman stretches full out between three Falcons defenders and claims it a fraction of an inch north of the turf. Tom Brady called it "one of the greatest catches I've ever seen." Falcons people had other descriptive phrases for it.
Credit: Bob Andres
Credit: Bob Andres
Chiefs fans got the Edelman treatment two weeks ago in the AFC Championship game. It didn’t take a Tony Romo to know that in clutch time, Edelman would be a popular Brady target. Even armed with that knowledge, Kansas City couldn’t stop him on two drive-sustaining third-and-long completions in overtime.
“He had a critical drop (that was intercepted) in that game and to me, it’s how do you respond to that?” Patriots receiver coach Chad O’Shea said. “He looked everybody in the eye and you knew how he was going to respond.”
The Patriots just keep going to him, and why not? Edelman would do anything to win, and he has the four-game PED suspension this season to prove it.
Catches like the one he made against the Falcons don’t just happen. A receiver such as him – a converted quarterback from Kent State drafted just ahead of 24 other players in 2009 – isn’t just born.
“That guy comes to compete every single day,” New England cornerback Jason McCourty said. “Jules is a guy who when he walks into the locker room and he’s fired up and ready to go. He’s a guy that every time I get there in the morning he’s probably already been there an hour.”
As for the toughness he displays as the slot receiver generously listed at 5-foot-10, 198 pounds, taking hit after hit over the middle, maybe that’s something in-bred. Although someone did ask Edelman this week if there is any way to train for that quality. “Yeah, I go to a batting cage, put the tokens in and I like to sit in front of it and let the balls hit me in the face,” he said. The consensus was that he was joking.
Jerry Rice perched atop postseason history in career receptions and yards is hardly a surprise. He is, after all, Jerry Rice.
But the fellow behind him is the uncommon commoner, Edelman, with 105 receptions. With 45 receiving yards Sunday – he stands at 1,271 – he’d pass Cliff Branch and Michael Irvin and become second to Rice in yardage.
Credit: ccompton@ajc.com
Credit: ccompton@ajc.com
So inconspicuous is Edelman in the scale of his profession that he walked the sidewalks of downtown Atlanta unnoticed Sunday night after the team arrived. He said he even got a half-hour tour from local who had no clue that here was a Patriots star.
And now with a thick, dark beard that has commandeered his face, Edelman’s looking even more like he’s working in disguise.
Some of the challenges he’s faced to get here – the late-life position change, the low profile coming out of college, the modest stature masking a wealth of athletic ability, the knee injury that cost him the entire 2017 season – were certainly not of his own making. Some undoubtedly were, like the PED suspension this season.
Even that he managed to turn into an engine of motivation. And, despite missing the first quarter of the regular season, he still led the Pats in receiving yardage, 850, on 74 catches. He has 247 more yards in two postseason games, averaging 15.4 yards per catch.
“He’s always been highly motivated, very driven, always had this underdog mentality about him,” O’Shea said. “I think it was probably even at a greater level by what he went through (with the suspension).”
Is it really possible he returned from the suspension even hungrier than before? Did he have something more to prove, amends to make?
“I’m always pretty hungry. I’m a hungry guy,” he said.
“I had to practice what I preach (after the suspension), be relentless and not worry about what I can’t control or worry about what happened in the past. Not worry about what might happen in the future. Worry about what’s on my plate right now.”
Boxing attempts to reach across size and weight class and determine the best pound-for-pound fighter in the ranks. Maybe football should do something like that, too.
“Pound for pound, I’d say (Edelman) would really rank high up there,” said tight end Rob Gronkowski, who has eight inches and 70 pounds on him. “If you watch him play the game it is the closest thing you can say a football player is to a boxer. He runs full speed, puts his head on the line every time, puts his body on the line, takes blows, gives blows, takes huge hits, gives huge hits.”
“He’s always been able to make the tough catch,” O’Shea said. “The ones our guys appreciate the most are those where he gets hit hard, gets back up like he is in a fight, gets back off the canvas, and jumps up and looks everybody in the eye. He really inspires the group by displaying his toughness when he gets hit.”
That kind of thing wins a lot of fans.
And it just infuriates the rest.
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