Julian Edelman retired following the 2020 season after one of the most improbable 11-year careers in NFL history. A seventh-round pick in 2009, Edelman stuck with the Patriots long enough to eventually get his own shot as Brady’s top target. He didn’t disappoint, racking up three 1,000-yard seasons along with the Super Bowl 53 MVP trophy.
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However, he had to wait four years for his turn to come around. During his first few seasons in the league, Tom Brady already had a quick and shifty white guy in the slot with Elmer glue hands: Wes Welker. Edelman and Welker were a very similar profile of player, though Edelman was an inch taller and a few pounds heavier.
When Welker joined the Patriots in 2007, he was coming off a promising season with 67 receptions for 687 yards with the Miami Dolphins. He clicked with Brady instantly, tearing up the middle of the field to the tune of 112 receptions in his debut season with the Pats. From then on, he was Brady’s guy — and that really rubbed Edelman the wrong way during those early years.
“I also used to get really annoyed when in meeting rooms… When Wes was there, I’d get so annoyed when I’d do the exact same thing that Wes would do, and [Brady] wouldn’t think [my thing] was any good. And I would get so f***ing annoyed with him,” Edelman recalled.
The difference was: Welker was doing it on the field on game day at an All-Pro level, while Edelman was still finding his footing. Welker would go on to catch 672 passes for 7,459 yards in his six years with the Patriots. He was a four-time All-Pro and a five-time Pro Bowler.
He led the league in receptions three times (2007, 2009, 2011) while topping 110 receptions in a season five times. No other player has done that more than three times. It’s no wonder Brady liked him so much that he gave him a sweet nickname. That annoyed Edelman too.
“But I remember when Wes left, then I was that guy… So like, I would get annoyed with that so much, when he would always bring up, ‘Hey, just do it a little more like Wessy.’ He’d call him Wessy… I would get so annoyed.”
While Edelman was busy fuming during film sessions with Brady and Welker, it was route running in the dead heat of summer with the quarterback that really got on Rob Gronkowski‘s nerves when they were all together in Foxborough.
“We just ran 50 routes; it’s like you and I out there only. We’re dead tired. It’s 90 degrees outside middle of the summer. He’d be like, ‘One more,’ then you would run one more route, and then he’d be like, ‘One more,'” revealed Gronk.
“And then I used to be like, ‘Tom, I’m not effing running one more. I just ran 50 routes!’ ‘Yeah, no, one more bud, one more. Do you wanna get better? One more.’ Then it’d be like 15 more routes, and then finally, it was the last one. Whatever Tom says, you do.”
That last comment — “whatever Tom says, you do” — probably had a lot to do with the Patriots’ success during those dynasty years. But having guys like Gronk and Edelman show that level of dedication to Brady specifically, rather than to the coaching staff or team as a whole, likely played a part in undermining Bill Belichick. In turn, that contributed to the unceremonious end of the greatest dynasty in modern sports.
