The Rutgers Route

Coach Bill Belichick has established a pattern of drafting from certain schools based on his relationship with the head coach. In 2010, he selected Brandon Spikes, Jermaine Cunningham and Aaron Hernandez from the University of Florida coached by his friend Urban Meyer. The roster has a couple of Alabama players coached by his former Defensive Coordinator at Cleveland, Nick Saban.

This year, he continued a stream of players from Rutgers University by drafting CB Logan Ryan, safety Duron Harmon and LB Steve Beauharnais. He also added CB Brandon Jones as an undrafted player. They will joing former Scarlet Knight Devin McCourty. The roster has also featured WR Tiquan Underwood and DL Alex Silvastro in recent years.

Belichick said that Rutgers is similar to his program in terms of the types of players recruited and how the program is run. The coach maintains a network of coaches at the college level who seem to provide a feeding system over the years.