5 takeaways from Edelman, Parcells Patriots Hall of Fame induction

New England Patriots

Willie McGinest shared a story that perfectly captured Parcells’s hard-nosed coaching style.

Bill Parcells and Julian Edelman officially earned their places in the Patriots Hall of Fame on Saturday evening.

The pair of Patriot greats were celebrated at their induction ceremony, surrounded by plenty of their Foxborough friends from Parcells and Edelman’s respective eras in New England.

As the recent inductees reminisced about their time with the Patriots, here are five takeaways from the induction ceremony:

Bill Parcells wishes he “would have done things a little differently” in Foxborough.

Before Bill Belichick came along and brought the Patriots their first Super Bowl victory, it was Parcells who truly brought New England into prosperity after years of mediocrity.

Parcells joined the Patriots in 1993 and immediately started turning the franchise around. The team went 2-14 the year before he signed on as coach, and by the 1996 season, it became a Super Bowl contender.

Unfortunately, what appeared to be the beginning of a long-run competing for championships in New England was cut very short. Prior to Super Bowl 31, it came out that Parcells was already in negotiations to become the New York Jets’ next head coach. Parcells officially jumped ship shortly after the Super Bowl loss, ending his Patriots tenure with plenty of burnt bridges.

While speaking during his induction ceremony, Parcells admitted some regrets about his time in Foxborough, and though he didn’t specify what, it was likely related to that exit.

This place has a place in my heart. It always will,” Parcells said. “We sometimes reflect on things, and you wish you would have done things a little differently. Well when I come back here and I see this, I wish I would have done things a little differently.”

Parcells was a major factor in Robert Kraft intervening to keep the Patriots in New England.

Robert Kraft had seemingly been crafting a clever way to own his hometown football team for quite some time before he was able to. But according to Kraft, Bill Parcells was a major driving force for why he pushed for the move so hard.

The former Patriots owner, James Orthwein, wanted to move the Patriots to St. Louis, but Kraft did everything in his power to make sure that move never happened.

“In his first season, he took the 2-14 team, and closed the year with a four game win streak capped off by a dramatic overtime victory against the Dolphins,” Kraft recalled. “It was the most excitement Patriot fans had felt in nearly a decade. That momentum, and the belief he inspired, was a major reason I made the decision to keep the team here in New England.”

At that time, Kraft owned the stadium and held a lease agreement with Orthwein until 2001. Kraft refused to let Orthwein out of the lease at any price, which not only gave him the leverage to keep the Patriots in Foxborough, but it allowed him to buy the team out entirely.

Willie McGinest’s unbelievable Parcells story — and how the coach altered his mindset.

Parcells made a name for himself as one of the toughest coaches in football. He pushed his players far beyond their limits in the pursuit of building a championship team.

No story provides a better peak into Parcells’s coaching style than Willie McGinest’s recollection of a training camp session under the Patriots Hall of Fame coach.

“My rookie year, we used to have practices … real practices. Two-a-days, full pads, in the heat. He looked at everybody, and he said ‘there is no light at the end of the tunnel’,” McGinest said. “… So [around] the 10th practice, I go into a full body breakdown, cramping, all those different things. My body breaks down.

“After the first practice, the van comes, they take me to the hospital. I’m in IVs, air conditioning, nice white sheets, it’s cool. I’m like ‘alright, I don’t have to go to practice, I’m done for the day’. … Here comes the ball boy after about an hour, he wakes me up, my pads and everything is on the side of the bed. I thought I was done for the day. He says ‘coach Parcells is expecting you at the second practice’.”

McGinest also shared some words of wisdom from Parcells that wound up shaping his mindset in the NFL.

“I had like three or four good games [in a row]. On the fourth game of just tearing things up, he comes over and he says, ‘McGinest. Finally starting to play’. I said ‘right, where you been?’,” McGinest said. “He was just like let me tell you something important. He said — and this hit me hard as a player — ‘anybody can do it once or twice. The great players? They do it all the time’. And that stuck with me.”

Julian Edelman didn’t think his roster spot was safe for five years.

Though Edelman built up a career as one of the greatest playoff performers and Patriots receivers of all time, his humble beginnings didn’t create much room for security during his first few cutdown days.

The seventh-rounder admitted during his Hall of Fame speech that it took him an incredibly long time to feel confident in his standing within the Patriots organization.

“For years I would drive up to this building, this stadium, and prayed it wouldn’t be my last,” Edelman said. “There was so much uncertainty that comes into a late round pick chasing his dream to be in this league. … I thought I was getting cut until like my fifth year.”

Edelman’s fifth NFL season saw a noticeable jump, as he turned from a core special teams player to a full-time offensive starter. He recorded 1,056 receiving yards that season, over 300 yards more than the total from his first four years combined.

What advice from Tom Brady stuck out to Edelman?

Edelman’s connection with Tom Brady helped take him to the next level as an offensive player. By 2013 it was clear that the slot receiver was Brady’s favorite target outside of Rob Gronkowski — and the proof showed up on the stat sheet. Edelman was targeted 150+ times by Brady three separate times in his career (2013, 2016, 2019).

So of course, Edelman had plenty of kind things to say about his quarterback. But it was an odd bit of advice during Edelman’s rookie year that seemed to stick with him.

“One of the first things Tom Brady ever said to me, I think we just got out of one of our first OTA practices … I go ‘man you work so hard’,” Edelman said. “And he looked at me with those big blue eyes and that jawline and he goes ‘babe, if all you ever do is all you’ve ever done, then all you’ll ever get is all you ever got’ and then he winked at me and left.”