Julian Edelman resigned during the 2021 offseason after 12 NFL seasons, every one of them with the New England Patriots. Yet, he had freedoms to join without a doubt two different groups – and firmly viewed as one of them. Joining Peyton and Eli Manning on their “Monday Night Football” broadcast to close Week 11, the previous Super Bowl MVP said Tom Brady attempted to enroll him to the Buccaneers when he migrated to Tampa Bay in 2020. Seven years sooner, Edelman added, he verged on getting Eli together with the Giants, in any case chose to stay with the Patriots for the span of his vocation.
“(Tom) hit me up the first day he signed there, like, ‘You wanna come down?'” Edelman said of a potential reunion with Brady and Rob Gronkowski in Tampa Bay. “I was like, ‘Absolutely not.'”
Edelman was in fact still under agreement with the Patriots when Brady left New England for sunnier fields, however 2020 ended up being his last season with the Pats. He was, notwithstanding, an authority free specialist back in 2013, when he played with the Giants before re-marking with New England on a one-year bargain.
“It was pretty close,” Edelman told the Manning brothers. “I went and visited down there in Jersey and met with (Tom) Coughlin and had nothing but respect for the organization … but I looked at my choices of going back to the Pats … (and) Peyton, thank you for taking (Wes) Welker off our hands … and the rest is history. You guys are saying, ‘Once a Giant, always a Giant.’ Well, ‘Almost a Giant, always a Patriot.'”
That is not all Edelman needed to say during his “Monday Night Football” visit. He additionally uncovered that another group, the Steelers, eyeballed him during the pre-draft process in 2009, when the Patriots made him a seventh-round pick. The catch? They resolved him as a guarded player, regardless of Edelman playing quarterback at Kent State.
