Julian Edelman Tips Helping This Patriots Rookie Through Position Change

FOXBORO, Mass. — As a former college quarterback trying to make it as a New England Patriots wide receiver, Malik Cunningham would be foolish to not lean on Julian Edelman as a resource.

So, that’s exactly what Cunningham has done as he prepares for his first NFL season.

The two haven’t had much direct contact, but Cunningham has spoken with Edelman and took his advice to heart.

“I talked to him maybe once or twice,” the undrafted rookie said Thursday after the Patriots’ eighth training camp practice. “He came in the training room. He told me to just keep my head down, keep working, just keep learning from the older guys and just keep being a sponge with everything.

“You can learn so much throughout the building as a receiver, a quarterback, just learning from the defensive guys and what they’re thinking, different coverages. Just picking their brains. It’s been fun.”

The Patriots still list Cunningham as a quarterback — the position he played at Louisville — and he’s taken a handful of reps there in camp, mostly during scout-team periods at the end of practice. But he’s almost exclusively repped at receiver, trying to earn a roster spot at a position he’d never played before arriving in New England in May.

Edelman, of course, made that same transition back in 2009, moving to wideout after playing QB at Kent State and eventually becoming one of the most productive pass-catchers in Patriots history.

“I just feel like they wouldn’t have taken a chance on me and I wouldn’t have come here if they didn’t think I could do it.”

Malik Cunningham

The odds of Cunningham following that same unlikely trajectory are slim, but the 24-year-old sees similarities between himself and the three-time Super Bowl champ, who was back in town Thursday to watch practice. Watching film of Edelman also has helped, especially since Bill O’Brien was the Patriots’ offensive coordinator for Edelman’s first three seasons (2009-11).

“He’s not the fastest guy, but he knows how to get open,” Cunningham said of Edelman. “Just using leverage based on the defender, and when the ball gets in your hands, just being a weapon with it. That’s something I feel like I’m accustomed to doing since I’ve been playing football. Getting the ball in my hands and making defenders miss.”

Edelman’s advice to Cunningham? Recognize your mistakes and learn from them.

“I haven’t really talked to him,” Edelman said during a post-practice media scrum. “I think I saw him in OTAs. Like I tell a lot of these young guys, what I learned at a young age from Scott O’Brien, who was a special teams guru, he said, ‘There’s going to be good plays and bad plays, but with every play, there is a bit of experience that you gain.’

“So the guys that can digest that bad play and learn from that experience, it helps them, so I just kind of explained that to young guys. And mistakes are going to be made all the time, you just can’t make the same mistake twice. That’s how you get replaced.”

Cunningham occupies one of the lowest rungs on the wide receiver depth chart a week into training camp, but he’s shown improvement of late. He fared well in 1-on-1s on Wednesday and Thursday, winning all three of his reps and beating first-round draft pick Christian Gonzalez on one of them.

The Patriots also are seeing what Cunningham can do on special teams, which has been a completely new experience for him. He’s taking reps as a punt gunner for the first time in his life and practicing his tackling for the first time since Pop Warner. Cunningham’s last attempted tackle in a game, he recalled, resulted in him getting “pancaked by two (defensive) linemen” after throwing an interception in college.

But Cunningham is making progress there, too. In Thursday’s practice, he shot downfield and downed a punt at the 1-yard line. He knows he’ll likely need to add value in the kicking game — as Edelman did early in his career — to have any chance of sticking around past cutdown day.

Cunningham is confident, though. If Edelman was able to do it, why can’t he?

“I just feel like they wouldn’t have taken a chance on me and I wouldn’t have come here if they didn’t think I could do it,” he said. “So it’s definitely good to see somebody before you do it and be able to watch them in the same offense and just build off that.

“Because you’re not going to be exactly him; he’s one of a kind, just the type of player he is. I’m just trying to pick different stuff from his game and add it to mine.”