Patriots receiver Julian Edelman has largely gotten a pass for his 2018 PED violation, which many (too many) excuse as the product of an effort to recover from a torn ACL suffered in 2017. Edelman didn’t get a pass from one person whose opinion matters most to him.
The positive test and the four-game suspension sparked a rift between Frank Edelman and Julian Edelman.
“Frank was very upset,” Angie Edelman, Julian’s mother, said in the new documentary that debuted Friday, via Boston.com. “Jules didn’t want his dad a part of this process. He was handling it with his attorneys, and my husband doesn’t understand that sometimes.”
“Me and my dad talk every day,” Edelman said. “And after that, we didn’t talk for a while.”
“A while” was 81 days.
Frank Edelman’s reaction is no surprise, given the discipline he instilled in Julian as a youth.
“I was terrified of him,” Julian Edelman said of his father. “Everyone was.”
According to Boston.com, the documentary explains that Frank Edelman would make Julian run drills blindfolded, would have Julian catch six balls at once, and would have instruct Julian’s sister to throw a towel in his face as Frank threw a football as hard as he could at Julian.
“He used to get so mad at me,” Frank Edelman said. “We’d fight. It was abusive. Then we’d go home and do homework.”
Frank Edelman’s efforts helped mold Julian Edelman into a gritty, hard-nosed football player, the kind of guy who can easily handle whatever Bill Belichick dishes out. But Frank also realized that which plenty of fans and media aren’t willing to acknowledge: Regardless of the justification, Julian cheated, and Julian got caught.
