FOXBOROUGH, Mass. -- With New England Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski already ruled out for Sunday’s road game against the San Francisco 49ers, it increases the likelihood that Matt Lengel will be active for his first career NFL game as the team’s No. 2 tight end alongside Martellus Bennett.
Some Patriots fans might be asking, "Who is Lengel?"
No. 82 in your updated Patriots program, he entered the NFL as an undrafted free agent out of Eastern Kentucky and spent his 2015 rookie season on the Cincinnati Bengals' practice squad. The 6-foot-7, 255-pound Lengel was spending a second season on the Bengals practice squad this year when the Patriots signed him to their active roster Nov. 2 after releasing veteran Clay Harbor and trading AJ Derby.
As it turns out, this isn’t Lengel's first experience with a New England-based football team. A native of Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, he enrolled at Northeastern University in 2009 and redshirted his freshman year before the school surprisingly announced it was ending its football program after that '09 season.
“My initial thought process was, ‘Am I ever going to play football again?’ I had just been redshirted and only had one full ride coming out of college, so who’s going to want me now?” Lengel recalled of the time. “I thought I’d be off the radar for everybody.”
But he caught the eye of several schools and ended up spending five seasons at Eastern Kentucky. His time at EKU was longer than anticipated because of tearing his ACL in the same knee in both 2012 and 2013.
Lengel, who turns 26 on Dec. 27, shares his “football journey” as part of ESPN.com’s weekly feature:
When he first started playing football: “Second grade. We were moving to a new school district in Cumberland Valley, where I went to high school. I had a dream, woke up, and told my dad, ‘I want to go play football.’ A couple days later, we got signed up and got all the pads. I’ve played ever since.”
Favorite teams and players growing up: “I followed Jon Ritchie. He was a fullback and went to my high school and was one of the first from there to play in the NFL. I just loved how he played, the blood was always dripping from his forehead. He was on the Raiders, and so I was a Raiders fan. I followed the Eagles a little bit [when Ritchie] played for them. But most of all, I grew up a Penn State fan.”
Role models in his life outside of football: “Definitely my dad [Brian]. Growing up as a kid, you see everything your dad does and then you start getting older and appreciate it that much more. He was a police officer. Here I am, I get stressed out coming to work because I have to learn the plays. He goes to work and gets stressed out because he might not come home. I just can’t wrap my brain how he was able to do that all those years. My mom [Beth] is a strong lady, too.”
Top football memories at Cumberland Valley: “We were a pretty good team. My senior year, we went 12-2, had a playoff game, it was 5 degrees, snow on the ground, and we absolutely obliterated the team we played [Governor Mifflin]. Just fun games like that. In Cumberland Valley, like many school districts, we run the same offense all the way from second grade to senior year. Same guys, same colors, same names, same plays. It was 10 years that all built up to that senior year. It was a great year, but we lost in the championship.”
Enrolling at Northeastern University in 2009: “I had wanted to go to Penn State more than anything, more than I wanted to go to the NFL. [Northeastern] was my only full scholarship and it’s a blessing to get that. Some other schools had some financial-aid packages, like Lafayette, but to be able to take that burden off my family I had to take it. Once I got there, I fell in love. It was awesome and I was all-in.”
Patriots TE Matt Lengel reminisces on 2009 at Northeastern before the Huskies' football program disbanded. pic.twitter.com/Wh4v6YvJEL
— Mike Reiss (@MikeReiss) November 2, 2016
What he loved about Northeastern: “The city. I’d never lived in a city like [Boston]. There were a bunch of good guys there. When you get there as a freshman, you’re looking for people to make friends with and I made some really good ones, some that are still in Boston.”
Moving on to Eastern Kentucky: “I met a lot of great people and had a ton of fun. Even with injuries and everything -- adversity is going to face everybody -- it taught me a lot of good lessons. We always had a good football team, never had a losing record, and went to the playoffs a few times. Some of the guys on that team are going to be my groomsmen coming up in June.”
Going undrafted in 2015: “As soon as the draft ended, about five minutes later, it was, ‘The Bengals want to take you.’ I said, ‘Absolutely. Let’s do it.’”
Spending 2015 and the first two months of 2016 on Bengals' practice squad: “It was a great experience. You learn what the NFL experience entails. How much time goes into it. How much you have to study. In college, you could learn something in practice, go back to your dorm room and play video games the rest of the night, and the next day you could know everything. It wasn’t as time-consuming. You get to the NFL and it’s your job. There’s a lot more that goes into it.”
Signed off the practice squad to the Patriots’ active roster: “I was surprised. I had just gotten back from London with the Bengals. I was sitting there watching ‘The Voice’ with my fiancée and the next thing you know my agent is calling me and I’m on a plane that night. You just never know who’s out there watching.”
Getting acclimated with the Patriots: “It’s been very fast. I’ve been trying to pick things up and I feel like I’ve done a pretty decent job of it. It’s pedal to the metal. It’s a great organization, obviously they’re very successful, and I’m just looking to do my job. Whatever they ask of me, I’ll do it.”
What he loves about football: “The competition of it. I feel like I’ve learned more about hard work and adversity. I feel like it’s a good microcosm of life. You just have to roll with it. With everything going on in the world, nothing beats just flat-out hard work. That’s my favorite thing about football: Hard work directly correlates to you getting better. You have to learn to embrace the hard work and love it.”
Summing up his football journey: “A roller coaster. Ups and downs. Ultimately lows. Ultimate highs. It’s been a crazy, crazy journey. The highs are worth the lows. It’s a pretty neat journey. I’ve been fortunate.”