Here is a question and answer from Bill Belichick on Patriots left guard Stephen Neal, who had never played football in college, coming to the Patriots as an undrafted college champion wrestler:
Belichick said:
“Steve’s a real interesting story. Over the summer of 2001, we worked Steve out, just as an athlete, really, just as you said, as a former wrestler with no football background since the eighth grade.
We worked him out and were impressed with his athletic ability and his size, and his overall body balance. I felt that even though he didn’t have much experience playing football that athletically he would certainly be able to compete with players on the line of scrimmage, because of his leverage and his ability to run.
In my brilliance, I decided to put him on defense and he was over there for about two or three weeks, and really was totally lost. It was really hard for him to react to all of the different things that the offense was doing – their different blocking schemes, reading run and pass, getting in the proper gaps and so forth and so on.
After a period of time we moved him over to offense, but he was so far behind at that point that he really didn’t have much of a chance to compete there. He just ran plays off the scout team.
Then when we signed him at the end of the season off of Philadelphia’s practice squad, he was much further along as an offensive football player, and he made great strides in the ’02 season.
Then even in the ’03 season when he was injured [he improved].
Then by ’04, he really had taken all of the classroom work and the individual instruction drills and things like that and was really able to transfer them to the field and play very well – remarkably, really, considering his lack of overall football experience.
When Steve started, he really didn’t even know where to go in the huddle. I mean, it was really starting from square one, but Steve’s a smart kid, he works hard, he’s very diligent, he’s tough, very athletic for his position and has been able to absorb a lot of information and process it and play to a high level.
He’s come a long way, but he’s worked hard. He certainly deserves everything that he’s gotten, but I’ve never coached a player that’s traveled the distance from where he started to what he’s become as a football player, and he’s great for our football team.
Nobody works harder or is tougher or gives more of himself to our team than Steve Neal.”
