FOXBOROUGH, Mass. (AP) — It’s not as if Jakob Johnson had never seen an American football before he became a member of the New England Patriots.
Johnson, 24, a native of Stuttgart, Germany, had played in an under-19 football league in Germany, and later, a year of high school ball in Jacksonville, Florida, where he was staying with relatives. Then he played four years at the University of Tennessee, first as a linebacker and then a tight end.
But he was not drafted, and as Patriots coach Bill Belichick said earlier this week, “he was not on our radar.