Cole Strange kept asking his coaches: “Where’s my ax?”
The New England Patriots first-round pick and former UT Chattanooga guard had won the ax for, essentially, the nastiest blocking on the team during the course of the 2019 season. Mocs offensive coordinator Joe Pizzo introduced the ax after struggling to get his players to cut block, a particularly painful form of blocking where the lineman or tight end throws himself at the legs of the defensive lineman in hopes of cutting him to the ground. It’s typical for tackles to perform the most cut blocks in a game and yet somehow Strange, a guard, finished first in cut blocks in every single game. He was at the top of the heap among his peers — perhaps because he was literally willing to end up at the bottom of the heap of bodies during the games.
Strange quickly clinched winning the ax at the end of the season.
“You throw out a goal in front of him and he’s going to be the best at it — or he’s going to die trying,” Pizzo said by phone on Monday.
When the pandemic rolled around, the Chattanooga coaching staff had to cancel their award ceremony, which meant Strange’s ax was sitting in Pizzo’s office. And so Strange kept asking: “Where’s my ax?”
It’s moments like that where you have to wonder whether the chatter that Strange was overdrafted at 29th overall might be overly critical. In a sense, Strange is perfect for the Patriots. He’s versatile, playing every position on the offensive line for the Mocs. He’s a good teammate in the locker room — but an absolute terror on the football field.
“He did everything right, from academics to first one in the weight room to first one on the practice field to staying late at practice to watching film after practice,” Pizzo said. “He was just a grinder — a throwback football player.”
You can just see Bill Belichick nodding and smiling, can’t you?
Cole Strange is a literal bully pic.twitter.com/5QksWLawoq
— Taylor Kyles (@tkyles39) April 29, 2022
“My feeling was, if someone was going to take a chance on him like that and not worry about what other people were thinking, it was going to be coach Belichick and the Patriots,” Pizzo said.
Strange had a propensity to play past the whistle, finishing both his blocks, and then someone else’s block – knocking two defensive players onto their butts. There were plenty of penalties, as a result. But the coaches didn’t chew him out for many of them. He was just doing what they asked: play past the whistle. He was a leader on and off the field and a great student. After the Patriots drafted him, Strange said his playing style was “aggressive and relentless.” He said he didn’t model his game after anyone, but hoped someday youngsters would model their game after him.
“I’ve always kind of just wanted to play my own game and make it to where people are saying, ‘I’d love to be able to play like Cole Strange,’ you know?” he said after Round 1 on Thursday.
Though UT Chattanooga competed against a lower level of competition, he had a great game against Kentucky, an SEC team, and the Mocs racked up 178 rushing yards, largely by running behind Strange at left guard.
“You want to talk about value,” Patriots director of player personnel Matt Groh said this weekend, “the guy started at three positions on the offensive line. I think it’s kind of easy to pigeonhole him as a guard. He does a lot. This guy is really tough. He’s really smart. He’s almost 6-foot-5, 300 pounds, and runs sub-5 seconds in the 40. There’s not a lot of humans out there that are doing that. (He benched 225 pounds 31 times. This is a really big, strong, tough, athletic guy. If you value toughness, which we do, you value guys like Cole Strange.”
After a strong performance at the Senior Bowl and the NFL combine during the pre-draft process, Strange was hearing more and more from NFL offensive line coaches and team executives in the days leading up to the draft.
“He felt more confident in going in the first round than I did,” Pizzo said, “not because he wasn’t capable. Obviously, it’s just we hear all the media stuff, too.”
Just about every draft analyst projected Strange to go in the second or third round — or later. So Pizzo, watching the 2022 draft at home, headed to bed at around the 20th pick on Thursday night. Not long after, Pizzo’s phone started blowing up: his guy was a Patriot. And Pizzo felt like it was the perfect fit. Even better? Media members were ripping the Patriots’ selection. It’s not a bad thing for Strange to have a chip on his shoulder to prove himself.
“I think he is going to be a better player because of the negative things — not the negative things but the comments that are said about him,” Pizzo said. “If Cole was playing anywhere other than UT Chattanooga, if he’d have been playing Alabama, Clemson, Ohio State, then he’d be a first-round draft pick.”
And he ended up being just that.
“They saw value in a guy and they didn’t worry about what anyone else thought,” Pizzo said. “I think that’s why Belichick and the Patriots took him in the first round.”
