Chris Hogan is Bill Belichick's Latest Under-The-Radar Free Agent Find

            Add Chris Hogan to the long list of players whose careers have been revitalized by Bill Belichick and the New England Patriots.

            The star of the 2016 AFC Championship, Hogan spent the first two years of his career in-and-out of three practice squads. He had short stints with the San Francisco 49ers (2011), New York Giants (2011) and Miami Dolphins (2012). Cut three times in two years, he latched onto the Buffalo Bills' active roster in 2013. Hogan was merely a complimentary receiver for Buffalo, catching 87 passes and just six touchdowns over three seasons.

            With a historic outing in the AFC Title Game, Hogan stamped his place in New England’s successful lineage of castoffs—Dion Lewis and Wes Welker to name a few—to thrive in the team’s lethal offense. After a solid regular season in which he posted four TDs and led all NFL receivers with 17.9 yards per catch, Hogan had his coming out party against the Pittsburgh Steelers, hauling in nine passes for 180 yards—a Patriots postseason record—with two touchdowns as New England cruised to a 36-17 victory.

Chris Hogan celebrates his first touchdown of the AFC Title Game. (Matt Freed/Post Gazette)

            The 28-year-old receiver played just one year of collegiate football for Monmouth College, where he recorded only 12 receptions. And yet, here was Hogan playing the leading role for the annual powerhouse Patriots with a Super Bowl berth on the line. Easily eluding the Steelers’ secondary all night long, Hogan helped propel the Patriots to an NFL-record ninth Super Bowl appearance. The Patriots are set to battle the NFC Champion Atlanta Falcons in what should be a shootout between two high-powered offenses.

            Hogan excels in creating separation and finding open space. But Pittsburgh’s defense made the wideout look like a superstar, often forgetting to cover the guy who was torching their secondary all game long. Their zone defense was pathetic and quarterback Tom Brady and Hogan took advantage, cashing in on chunk gains of 26, 22, 34, 24, 16 and 39 yards.

            Putting on a clinic in front of a rowdy Gillette Stadium crowd, Hogan will forever cherish this performance.

            “It’ll be something that definitely I’ll remember for the rest of my career and probably for the rest of my life,” Hogan said after the game. “Someone told me that this was going to be a game that you’ll look back on 30 years from now and you’ll remember exactly what happened, and I’m just happy for our group. Everyone. All these guys in the locker room, coaches. We’ve worked so hard to get here and I’m just so happy I was able to help this team.”

            A week after corralling four receptions for 95 yards against the No. 1 ranked Houston Texans defense, Hogan is now averaging 137.5 receiving yards per contest in the postseason. Not bad for a lacrosse-turned-football player who played the majority of his snaps of his lone season at Monmouth at cornerback, did not get an invite to the NFL combine, failed to record a single snap with the 49ers, Giants and Dolphins, and was gladly let go by the Bills in the offseason.