Mohamed Sanu officially became the fourth player on the New England Patriots' roster from Rutgers on Wednesday, joining Devin McCourty, Jason McCourty and Duron Harmon.
Coincidence? Hardly.
Head coach Bill Belichick, you see, has a thing for Rutgers football. His son Stephen, now the Patriots' secondary/safeties coach, played football and lacrosse at Rutgers and actually was Sanu's teammate as the Scarlet Knights' long-snapper in 2011 under head coach Greg Schiano.
So, when Belichick was asked Wednesday if he had prior experience with Sanu coming out Rutgers, he gave the obvious answer:
"Yeah, we go way back."
Given Belichick's penchant for sarcasm, ESPN's Mike Reiss had to ask if the head coach was serious.
"Yeah, we saw everybody at Rutgers," Belichick replied.
(You can watch the wonderful exchange in the video player above.)
What makes this particularly wonderful is that Belichick is dead serious. Since his son left Rutgers in 2011, Belichick has employed a total of eight former Scarlet Knights: Sanu, the McCourty twins, Harmon, Logan Ryan, Kenny Britt, Tiquan Underwood and Steve Beauharnais.
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That's an average of one player per year from a school that's had just three winning seasons in the last decade.
In Belichick's defense, he's gotten pretty good production from his Rutgers picks; the McCourtys and Harmon anchor the top defense in the NFL, and Sanu is a productive, big-bodied slot receiver who should fit well in New England's system.
"He's a very experienced receiver," Belichick added. "He's had a lot of production, so glad to have him. We'll see how it goes."
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