Friends, family talk about remarkable football bond between Patriots' rookies Damien Harris, Jarrett Stidham

If Bill Belichick is looking for an answer as to how to best mesh the talents of rookies Damien Harris and Jarrett Stidham, he could give Mike Goggins a call.

In 2003, he had them both on his Madison County Youth Football League team -- the 49ers -- as 8-year-olds. Now, after the two faced each other as collegians in the Iron Bowl on multiple occasions (Stidham with Auburn and Harris with Alabama), the running back and quarterback are reunited in Foxborough with the Patriots.

“I’ve known Damien for basically my entire life it seems like, and we’ve definitely kept in touch,” Stidham said of his connection with Harris shortly after the two were drafted. “It’s funny — as soon as I get off this call, I’m actually going to give him a shout and tell him how excited I am to play with him again.

“Life always comes full circle, and to be with the very first year of tackle football playing with Damien, and now we’re both New England Patriots, it’s going to be a lot of fun.”

Stidham and Harris' football careers started a year before they were together on the 49ers, when they both played flag football in town. The following year was the first foray into tackle football. At the 2003 youth draft -- a blind draw -- assistant coach Neil Burns represented the 49ers, and landed Harris with his first pick and Stidham with his second.

“Neil comes back and tells me who we got. ‘I got Damien, I got Jarrett,’ he said,” recalled Goggins. “I just had this smile on my face.

“‘Did we do good?’ he asked me. I replied, ‘Hell, we’re going to win this whole thing.’”

Led by Stidham and Jarrett, the 49ers went undefeated, and allowed just one touchdown the entire season.

“You could tell Jarrett’s arm was strong, even at that age, and Damien was exceptionally fast, and good at not getting hit,” said Byron Smoot, a former youth football coach in the same town who would go on to coach Harris at the high school level. “He was so fast, you knew that if he could get to the corner, he’d be gone. Between the two of them, you could see their football future pretty early.

“Watching those guys play, you’d know they’d make for a heck of a team when they’d hit high school. They knew what they were doing, and they were well-coached — I know Mike and Neil, and they did a heck of a job with those kids. They’d coached together for years, and they just did a great job.”