Relentless

ONE

I CAUGHT IT!

From the moment we got into our locker room at halftime, I told anyone who’d listen how the second half was going to go. “It’s gonna be a helluva story, boys!”

With the score leaving us buried under a 21–3 deficit, Super Bowl LI had been a thirty-minute horror show at NRG Stadium in Houston. The Atlanta Falcons’ speed and execution and our lack of precision put us in a Super Bowl hole deeper than one any team had ever climbed out of.

What made me so sure there would be a plot twist? Didn’t I have doubts? No. We’d been in holes like this before. In Super Bowl XLIX, we trailed by 10 at the start of the fourth quarter against Seattle. No team had ever erased a double-digit deficit in the fourth quarter of a Super Bowl. We did.

Nobody believed in us then. I was sure nobody believed in us now. That didn’t matter. Nobody believed a lot of us would even get to the NFL. Here we were. Nobody believed Tom Brady would go from a sixth-round pick to the best ever. He did. Nobody believed Bill Belichick was a legend-in-waiting when he was hired by the Patriots in 2000. He was. Nobody believed I could play quarterback at a Division 1 football program in college and turn myself into a wide receiver in the NFL. I had. Our organization was loaded with people who ignored doubters to get where they were.

The key to achieving isn’t looking at the ultimate goal. It’s believing and then focusing completely on the next step in front of you. That’s what our offensive coordinator, Josh McDaniels, kept telling us. “Don’t do anything you can’t do. Don’t try to make it all up in one play. Play each play by itself.”

Just before the second-half kickoff, Tom sat down next to me on our bench. I reminded him once more, “Gonna be a helluva story.”

“Hell, yeah,” he said.

Coming out of halftime, the Falcons threw one more shovelful of dirt on us and went up 28–3. Finally, it was time to dig out, and everybody grabbed a shovel.

We were down 28–9 after three quarters thanks to a James White touchdown catch. We added on a Stephen Gostkowski field goal to make it 28–12. Dont’a Hightower strip-sacked Matt Ryan and TB cashed that in with a touchdown pass to Danny Amendola early in the fourth quarter. We got the two-point conversion from James and you couldn’t help but do the math in your head and think, Hey, we have an opportunity here…

We were almost out of the hole.

There was an excitement right then that you could feel. It’s hard to describe it. I’ve been on mentally tough teams, but this one was something special. We played the first four games of the season without Tom. We lost his backup Jimmy Garoppolo in the second game of the season. We pulled together as a team after getting rocked by the trade of one of our best defensive players, Jamie Collins. We kept on after losing our great tight end Rob Gronkowski to a back injury. We knew how to take a punch. We also knew how to respond to one.

Poise meant everything. We knew what we were in the midst of doing in that second half. Hell, Duron Harmon, one of our safeties, walked into the locker room at halftime and said, “This is going to be the greatest comeback of all time!” and we all believed him. But we had a lot to do to make Duron—and me—prophets. There was no early celebrating. I thought, It’s happening, but I won’t get excited like we accomplished something. Just keep going. One play at a time. Do your job. Stay in the moment. The messages we’d received from Coach Belichick since we became Patriots were in full effect as we took the field with 3:36 remaining, 91 yards and a two-point conversion from tying the game.

We know situations. Our percentages were low. Real low. We had to be almost perfect. We needed a chunk play: a bunch of yards in one big bite. That’s important for a successful two-minute drive, and the Falcons knew it as well as we did. They’d be looking for any downfield throws.

On first-and-10 from our 36 with 2:28 left, we went for the chunk.

As we came to the line, I saw that the Falcons’ alignment gave me a “chute” route, which meant that if their two safeties were split, I would keep my route thin, sprinting in a direct line toward the goalpost upright nearest me. If there was a single safety in the middle of the field, it would be a situation known as “middle field closed” and I would run a crossing route. It’s a pretty standard NFL route. You just adjust and take what the defense is giving you.

Atlanta moved into a defense known as “cover-5.” That’s two deep safeties, each one covering half of the field, and man-to-man coverage underneath. My defender, the Falcons’ corner Robert Alford, had inside leverage, meaning he was lined up to stop me from going inside him to the middle of the field. We both knew that the deep middle was the weak spot, because the safeties were split. Just beat Alford, then get inside him.

We’d executed the same play a couple of times in practice leading up to the Super Bowl back when we were in Foxborough. Usually, if we hit something in practice that’s a chunk play, Tom will want to run it because it means we’re already comfortable with it. You need that confidence.

Alford was backed off the line about three yards. Our big tight end, Martellus Bennett, was lined up to my right, and outside him was James White, our running back. At the snap, I had to get up on Alford fast, then shake him.

Alford is a really good cornerback—he even had a pick-6 on Tom in the first half—but I felt I had him where I wanted him. I took off hard to set him up for a sharp cut about ten yards downfield. But I didn’t give him a great move. Instead of sticking my right foot in the ground hard and cutting sharply, I rushed and rolled into my cut. I didn’t get across his face as effectively as I wanted. Alford warded me off and caused me to drift a little farther upfield so my cut wasn’t sharp at all.

On a route like this, the quarterback’s worst nightmare is the defensive back turning his head around getting a look at the ball, especially if the receiver is behind the DB. That’s what Alford did. I saw his head turn and thought, Oh, shit. If this gets picked, we’re done.

He was slightly off stride, though, so all he could do was jump and bat at it. I jumped when he did, so I was stuck in the air, staring at the ball as it dropped. I was like a guy in the desert who hasn’t seen water in ten days pulling up to a stream. I had to get to that ball. It felt like life or death.

Alford was on the ground now, the ball falling toward him. The two safeties—Ricardo Allen and Keanu Neal—weren’t split anymore. They were coming for the ball, too. I landed, took two little steps to gather myself, and dove, my eyes glued to the ball.

I had to grab it before it dropped to Alford. Neal was pushing through my right side, stretching his hands past mine. The red gloves of Allen were sliding in. Everybody’s hands were converging.

The ball hit Alford’s leg and I curled my right hand around it at the same time, then repositioned quickly for a better grip with both hands. Alford kicked at the ball. I let go to reposition my hands a second time, then slapped them back on. Now that I had control, I rolled to box out Neal. The critical thing? Neal’s arm. I was worried he’d knife his hand in and pry my arm or hand off the ball. That is a huge coaching point for both sides, offense and defense. Whenever there’s a contested catch, the defense goes for your arms and rips. All I was thinking was, “Catch and protect, because these MFers are pros! They’ll get it loose!”

With Neal digging and me rolling, I realized it never hit the ground. It was time to sell it. Before the referees got to us, I started to yell, “I caught it! I caught it! I caught it!” The sales job was important because if the referees ruled that it was incomplete, we would have to challenge the call.

That was risky, because if we didn’t win the challenge, we’d lose a time-out. Would it be worth doing that for a twenty-three-yard gain with two minutes left in the game? Whatever the call is, “indisputable video evidence” is needed to overturn it, so we needed the initial ruling to be that it was a catch.

The officials ruled that it was. Now Atlanta had to challenge.

As I stood there, looking up at the video board, I had no doubt that I’d managed to keep the ball off the ground. One of the Falcons’ corners, Brian Poole, said, “No way!” And I said to him, “I swear to God! Watch!” It was like we were in a giant living room watching a game together while the game itself was still going on. Weird.

Then we heard the ruling. The catch was upheld. We had our chunk play. We had momentum. And soon, we finished off one helluva story.

Helping the Patriots win another Super Bowl, my second, was an incredible feeling, and that play just about sums up my career. Having to fight. Having to compete against multiple guys when the odds were stacked against me. Having people doubt me. All of it is like gas in my tank.

When I was a kid, I loved stories about guys who overcame, whether it was Brian’s Song or the Rocky movies or hearing about Joe Montana, a third-round pick who went on to become one of the greatest ever for my hometown 49ers. Any story in which someone was overcoming adversity, I identified with. And all along the way, those stories have been motivators for me. They gave me the mind-set to always be relentless.

I’ve been told that my story has a lot of the same elements. Going into high school, I was less than five feet tall and didn’t even weigh a hundred pounds soaking wet. By my senior year, I was quarterback for my Woodside (California) High School team and we went 13-0. And it has been that way at every level since: junior college, college, and the NFL. Every time something was blocking my path, I had to find a way around it. Or through it. And I’ve been able to. Not by myself, either. Every success I’ve had has been shared with my family, because they built the foundation for me. And the coaches, teammates and friends, they all have a part in this, too.

If you find your talent in life (mine just happened to be playing football) and you also have a passion for it and you work hard consistently, there is a very good chance you will realize your dreams. That’s been my experience. You can’t say you want to do it. You can’t talk about it with your friends. You have to do it. You can’t just give it a shot and go halfway.

Sometimes it means not finding balance in life. You might not be the best friend. You might not be the best family member who’s there all the time. But it was instilled in me from a young age that if you want to be great at something, you have to go after it. Completely. Some people may be able to reach the top on sheer talent, but not a lot of us.

Have you ever heard of FoMO? It’s the Fear of Missing Out. A lot of people look at something they want to do with their lives and then look at what it will take to achieve it, and they decide the commitment isn’t worth it. People are often too conservative to take that leap of faith.

When I trained for my pro day after finishing at Kent State, it was the one time in my life where I had to be at my absolute best. Everything was riding on how I did. Everything that came before, back to when I was a little kid playing Pop Warner, and everything that could come after rode on it. Would I be an NFL player or would I need to find a postcollege job as a firefighter or work next to my dad at A1 Auto Tech? I attacked it like my life was a Rocky montage.

When it was time to make the Patriots, of course I had butterflies, of course I had fear of failure, but you have to realize that those things are true in any competition. Fight or flight. You have to embrace it. If you fail, you fail. I’ve failed plenty of times in my life, more times than I’ve succeeded. But that’s the reality of trying to accomplish something.

And the other thing? In order to achieve, you have to be willing to be pushed by the people who are trying to help you get to where you want to go. People can’t get yelled at anymore. A lot of people back down and quit when they get pushed. I understand how society views it these days, but I believe that sometimes as a kid, you need to be called out and told hard truths. You need to be shown the consequences of what will happen if you screw up. You need people who won’t say, “Everything’s OK…” when it really isn’t. My father pointed out the bad more than the good. And Coach Belichick spends a lot more time telling us what we need to further improve on instead of patting us on the ass for something we’re supposed to be doing anyway.

You have to have thick skin in this world. Look at Barack Obama. All politics aside, this man defied every expectation in becoming the first African American president. All the things he overcame to do that, all he had to endure coming from where he did? I have so much respect for that journey. Or a woman who becomes a CEO or high-level executive in an industry in which women haven’t been a part of the plan. She’ll hear the doubters, too.

Or a single mom of three deaf children living in Oklahoma who moved cross-country to California so those kids could get an education and not be pushed to the side. Or a guy without a father and no real supervision who lived in a dozen different places growing up, including a trailer park, yet still developed a work ethic and resilience strong enough to build a business and provide for his family. That’s what I saw growing up. I’ve seen the hard route taken.

That single mom? She is my grandmother Mary Louise Hinds. And that guy who grew up like a wild child? He is my dad, Frank Edelman.

It was people like them who taught me to never give up. I mentioned I grew up small—I was four foot eleven and ninety-five pounds in ninth grade, to be exact—and I wanted to play in the NFL. If I looked in the mirror every day and tried to picture myself playing in the NFL at that size, I would have found a great way to be discouraged.

But I wasn’t thinking then how to beat an NFL defender, because, well, what’s the point? If you’re focused on that distant goal, you’re missing what’s right in front of you, and that’s what you can control. If you’re doing everything else in your life fundamentally sound, and you’re identifying weaknesses and you’re working consistently hard to improve those, you’re on the right path.

And when someone tells you that you can’t do it? You use it as fuel. You play games with yourself. You create a story and you make yourself the hero.

You hear shit all the time but, at the end of the day, when you’re working on your craft, you’re not thinking about the negativity. That may get you started, but you can’t stop in the middle of practice and say, “Damn, this guy thinks I’m too slow. Or too small…” The motivation has to come from somewhere inside you, and you have to grow it.

You have to outlast the doubters. Because it gets hard. Then it gets harder. And a lot of people don’t like it. They don’t like the pressure in their chest. But I thrive on it, the feeling that it’s on me.

For anyone out there who is surrounded by doubters, I hope you find some inspiration in my story. I still have a lot of football in me, but getting here has been a wild ride, and I have aspired to be nothing if not relentless.