Julian Edelman

Nobody invited Julian Edelman to the 2009 NFL Combine, so the Kent State quarterback ran his 20-yard shuttle at a campus pro day instead: 3.92 seconds, faster than every player at the Combine that year. New England took him in the seventh round, pick 232, converted him to receiver, and got twelve seasons, three Super Bowl rings and a Super Bowl MVP out of the bargain.

Birth and Death Dates:
b. May 22, 1986

Career Highlights:
At Kent State, Edelman was a running quarterback — 1,820 passing and 1,370 rushing yards as a senior, breaking Joshua Cribbs' school total-offense record. The Patriots drafted him to play a different sport, more or less. He made the roster as a punt returner (his four punt-return touchdowns are still a franchise record, including a 94-yarder against Miami in January 2011) and by 2013 had become Tom Brady's most reliable target. He retired with 620 receptions for 6,822 yards and 36 touchdowns, second in Patriots history in catches.

The postseason made him famous. In Super Bowl LI against Atlanta, with New England trailing 28-20 in a game they had trailed 28-3, a Brady pass ricocheted off cornerback Robert Alford's leg and Edelman somehow secured it inches above the turf between three defenders. "One of the greatest catches I've ever seen," Brady said. "I don't know how he caught it." Edelman himself never liked talking about the play — the ball was tipped, he admitted, because he had run the route wrong. Two years later he caught ten passes for 141 yards against the Rams in Super Bowl LIII and was named the game's MVP, the first receiver so honored since Santonio Holmes a decade earlier. At retirement his 118 postseason receptions trailed only Jerry Rice; Travis Kelce has since passed both.

Edelman's Jewish identity came to him as an adult — his father Frank's line runs back to Harry Edelman, a Polish Jew who emigrated to England — and he first spoke about it publicly in a 2013 NFL Network interview. He took a ten-day trip to Israel in 2015, praying at the Western Wall and attending a bar mitzvah on Masada. After the 2018 Pittsburgh synagogue shooting he wore an Israeli-flag cap and "#StrongerThanHate" cleats. In 2020 he answered DeSean Jackson's antisemitic posts not with outrage but with an invitation to walk through the Holocaust Museum together — "We need to have these uncomfortable conversations if we're going to have real change" — and in 2021 he wrote an open letter to the NBA's Meyers Leonard that ended with an invitation to Shabbat dinner.

He announced his retirement on April 12, 2021, wearing a Star of David necklace. Since then: analyst on Inside the NFL, two podcasts, two children's books, and, in 2026, election by the fans to the Patriots Hall of Fame. The International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame announced him in its class of 2026 the same spring.

Origin:
Redwood City, California

Physical description:
5'10", 198 pounds