Patriots WR Edelman says he’s retiring
He cites knee injury that cut his 2020 season short after 6 games
BOSTON — For more than a decade, Julian Edelman lived the ultimate NFL underdog story, going from undersized college quarterback to a favorite option of Tom Brady on three New England Patriots Super Bowl-winning teams.
He says he’ll leave the league after giving everything he had to the sport.
Citing a knee injury that cut his 2020 season short after just six games, Edelman announced Monday that he is retiring from the NFL after 11 seasons.
“Nothing in my career has ever come easy. And no surprise, this isn’t going to come easy either,” Edelman said fighting back tears in a video posted to Twitter. “I’ve always said I’m going to go until the wheels come off. And they finally have fallen off.”
Earlier in the day, the Patriots terminated the contract of the Super Bowl 53 MVP after the receiver failed a physical.
It brings an abrupt end to the 11-year New England tenure of the 34-year-old, whose fingertip catch helped complete the Patriots’ historic Super Bowl 51 comeback win over the Atlanta Falcons.
He appeared in just six games last season before going on injured reserve following a surgical procedure on his knee. He also missed the entire 2017
season after tearing the anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee.
Edelman was entering the final season of a two-year, $15.5 million contract. He was facing an uphill climb to make the roster in 2021 following the Patriots’ efforts to remake the receiving group after their struggles last season. The Patriots have already added receivers Kendrick Bourne and Nelson Agholor in free agency.
A seventh-round pick in the 2009 draft out of Kent State, Edelman retires ranked second in team history with 620 receptions, fourth in receiving yards (6,822) and ninth with 36 receiving touchdowns.
He also had 58 rushing attempts for 413 yards, the most rushing attempts and rushing yards by a wide receiver in Patriots history. His 9,869 all-purpose yards are fourth in team history.
Edelman will be most remembered for what he did during the postseason, though: 118 catches for 1,422 yards and seven touchdowns.
He reached his pinnacle in Super Bowl 53 when he hauled in 10 receptions for 141 yards in helping lift the Patriots to a 13-3 victory over the Los Angeles Rams.
That postseason Edelman also tied Dallas’ Michael Irvin for the second-most 100-yard receiving games in the postseason with six, just two behind Jerry Rice’s NFL record.
REID: Former Kansas City Chiefs assistant coach Britt Reid was charged Monday with driving while intoxicated resulting in serious physical injury after a crash that left a young girl critically injured.
The Jackson County prosecutor’s office said Reid’s blood alcohol content shortly after the Feb. 4 crash was 0.113, above the legal limit of .08. He was driving about 84 mph in a 65 mph zone seconds before his truck crashed into two cars stopped on an entrance ramp to Interstate 435 near Arrowhead Stadium, prosecutors said.
One of the vehicles had stalled because its battery was dead and the second was owned by a cousin who had arrived to help, according to the charging documents.
A 5-year-old girl in the second car, Ariel Young, suffered a traumatic brain injury. Her family’s attorney told The Kansas City Star on Monday that she was released from the hospital on April 2 and is being treated at her home. She is unable to talk or walk and is being fed through a feeding tube.
Reid, the son of Chiefs coach Andy Reid, could be sentenced to up to seven years in prison if convicted of the felony charge.
BROWNS: The Browns appear to be closing in on Jadeveon Clowney.
Continuing a pursuit that began with a contract offer Clowney turned down last year, Cleveland remains interested in signing the free-agent defensive end, a person familiar with the situation told The Associated Press. Clowney visited the Browns on March 24, and NFL Network reported on Monday that he’ll return to Cleveland’s headquarters Wednesday — a visit that could include a physical that may lead to a contract agreement. The Browns offered Clowney a multiyear contract last year, the largest one he received, before he opted to take a one-year, $13 million deal with the Tennessee Titans.