Maybe it’s cliché to call him this, but when the Patriots couldn’t figure out quite what to do with Julian Edelman a decade ago, it was what he was, not what he wasn’t, that led Bill Belichick to keep the light on for him.
Edelman, who announced his retirement Monday, was a football player, in the truest sense of the term.
He arrived in Foxboro in 2009 as an undersized college quarterback looking for a job, even if no one was positive where it would be. Then-Patriot Midwest area scout Jim Nagy identified him during his last year at Kent State, in the fall of 2008, and presented him to his staffmates as an interesting developmental returner/slot prospect at December and February draft meetings.