At this point, pretty much everyone knows that there are a LOT of lacrosse connections to this year’s Super Bowl. It’s officially a Lacrosse Super Bowl. If you didn’t know that before, well, now you do. Plenty of people have been talking about this year’s lacrosse phenomenon, so instead of just copying their work and pawning it off as our own, we will simply link to their stories.
First we go through the basics of which Super Bowl football teams have lacrosse guys where, then we get to the links!
Jim Fenzel drew up a GREAT Laxcots cartoon as the main image, and keep your eyes peeled for an exciting announcement on Monday regarding the 2018 Laxcots movement!
Lacrosse Super Bowl Players
Chris Hogan – Before playing D1 football for a year at Monmouth or WR for the Patriots, Hogan played 4 years of lacrosse at Penn State. He was good. He was real good. Hogan is a TBL athlete, and picked up a stick at last year’s Super Bowl media week to prove he’s still got it. He does, and has a spot on my summer team any time he wants it.
[fvplayer src=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D38gfWyFa7s” splash=”https://i.ytimg.com/vi/D38gfWyFa7s/hqdefault.jpg” caption=”Chris Hogan breaks down the NCAA Lacrosse Tournament”]
Chris Long – Long played in high school in Virginia, and while people didn’t call him a “skill player”, he did have a certain skill, and that was blowing people up on groundballs. It seems to have transferred to a solid DE skill set nicely. His wife is a lacrosse diehard, so really he’s making the list for her as much as for himself.
James Develin – The Pats hard hitting fullback is from the Philly area, and he played lacrosse in high school for Boyertown Area Senior HS.
Bill Belichick – Belichick played football and lacrosse at Wesleyan University in CT. I also played both sports at Wesleyan, and I’m pretty sure that means I’ll be the next coach of the Patriots. No? It doesn’t work that way? Oh, well ok. Belichick grew up in Annapolis as the son of a coach, and that certainly explains the football/lacrosse thing pretty nicely! Coach Raba, the current Wesleyan Lacrosse coach is also a lacrosse/football guy, and he was one heck of a two-sport athlete in college, starring as a running fullback for a top level D2 football program at New Haven, and scoring 96 goals and dishing out 53 assists as a midfielder and face off specialist during only two years of play on the team (JR and SR years).
We don’t have video of Belichick, so here is some video of Coach Raba in High School at Farmingdale, because why not?
[fvplayer src=”https://vimeo.com/56493411″]
Chris Mattes – Mattes started off working in football operations and player development for the pros after he himself had played pro… lacrosse. The former Florida Launch midfielder is now crushing it for the Pats.
Mike Pellegrino – I loved watching Pellegrino play at Hopkins. He had a motor and a knack for making big plays. Now he brings that motor to coaching the Pats defense. He played for the Cannons briefly in MLL, but gave that up to pursue coaching in football full-time.
Steve Belichick – Bill’s son, Steve, played at Rutgers, and is another lacrosse player turned football coach on the Pats’ sideline.
