Julian Edelman gave his blunt assessment of former coach Bill Belichick’s relationship with his 24-year-old girlfriend, Jordon Hudson.
“The No. 1 thing we used to talk about in New England was distractions,” Edelman, 38, said during a Wednesday, May 7 appearance on The Herd with Colin Cowherd. “‘Let’s not make distractions. The game’s already as hard as it is.’”
Edelman — who played for Belichick, 73, for 12 seasons in New England from 2009 to 2020, winning three Super Bowls — acknowledged how Belichick’s controversial interview on CBS Sunday Morning last month, during which Hudson shot down questions about their relationship from off camera, has overshadowed his new role as head football coach at the University of North Carolina.
“Now that it’s gained and snowballed to what it’s become right now, where we’re talking about it three weeks later, it’s become a distraction,” Edelman said. “That’s what we all think now. This is becoming a distraction. We gotta practice as we preach here.”
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Edelman added, “We shouldn’t be talking about our girlfriend. And that’s how coach would say it to us. That’s the truth. When it comes down to running a football organization and playing football, let’s keep the main thing the main thing.”
Despite Edelman admonishing the predicament that Belichick has found himself in, he said criticism about the CBS interview is rooted in an “unfair reality.”
“I thought he got an unfair public opinion on the whole thing, because that happens all the time,” Edelman said of Hudson’s behavior during the interview. “Anytime we do behind-the-scenes this [and] that, you’ve got someone that represents you, they’re gonna jump in.”
He added, “She was jumping into that conversation during the interview, just like any PR. person would jump in when there’s an unnecessary question that they probably didn’t go over in the pre-production meeting.”
After the interview aired, Belichick issued a statement criticizing CBS while defending Hudson’s actions.
“I agreed to speak with CBS Sunday Morning to promote my new book, The Art of Winning – Lessons from My Life in Football,” Belichick said in a statement released by the University of North Carolina on April 30. “Prior to this interview, I clearly communicated with my publicist at Simon & Schuster that any promotional interviews I participated in would agree to focus solely on the contents of the book.”
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The statement continued, “I was surprised when unrelated topics were introduced, and I repeatedly expressed to the reporter, Tony Dokoupil, and the producers that I preferred to keep that conversation centered on the book,” Belichick said. “After this occurred several times, Jordon, with whom I share both a personal and professional relationship, stepped in to reiterate that point to help refocus the discussion.”
CBS issued a statement of their own, insisting the interview with Belichick did not come with any restrictions.
“There were no preconditions or limitations to this conversation,” a CBS spokesperson said. “This was confirmed repeatedly with his publisher before the interview took place and after it was completed.”
