A tight-lipped team like the Patriots won’t tell you where their needs and trouble-spots are. That’s why we all hedge predictions with our draft forecasting. We may think we know, but until a selection is made confirming suspicions, we can’t be sure.
The team imported 18 players this weekend – nine draft picks and nine reported undrafted free agents. What did we learn?
The Patriots weren’t as concerned about finding a running back as I expected. They only brought in one, Arizona State’s D.J. Foster, an undrafted free agent. He’s a pass-catching back – 5-10, 193 pounds – who caught 63, 62 and 59 passes and has the ability to split out wide. That indicates a belief LeGarrette Blount will be good to go as the beef-back in September and that Donald Brown, Brandon Bolden and Tyler Gaffney will provide depth behind him. The addition of Foster should have James White looking over his shoulder.
The team didn’t see the fit or the urgency to address the tackle position with a bona-fide tackle. Third-round pick Joe Thuney could turn into one at this level but even he described himself as an interior lineman on his conference call with New England media. Starters Sebastian Vollmer and Nate Solder and backup LaAdrian Waddle are tackles and tackles only. Marcus Cannon, Cameron Fleming and Thuney are guys who can play tackle plus a few other spots. How well Waddle, Cannon, Thuney and Fleming perform this year under Dante Scarnecchia will likely determine whether the Patriots use an early pick in 2017 on a tackle. Cannon in particular is on notice with the addition of Thuney.
The Patriots aren’t going to roll the dice at backup quarterback. By taking NC State’s impressive Jacoby Brissett this season, the team’s preparing for life after Jimmy G. With Tom Brady’s suspension back on, Garoppolo is obviously the odds-on starter. The team has months to decide whether it wants to add a veteran behind Garoppolo or let Brissett do it. That’s a call that may not be made until August when cutdowns come and capable veterans are turned out. But having Brissett aboard now means he gets a season of seasoning before next spring when the team will likely try to move Garoppolo and get picks in return and make Brissett the backup to Brady, whose contract runs through 2019.
Tight end is never far from the team’s mind. It wasn’t a great tight end class at the top, so the Patriots didn’t burn a pick there. But they did pick up Vanderbilt’s Steven Scheu (pronounced “SHOY”), who caught 56 passes over his final two years with the Commodores and is – at 6-4, 253 – more of a blocking/in-line tight end. They also grabbed De’Runnya Wilson, a 6-5, 224-pound former basketball player who may turn into a red-zone weapon with his ball skills. Verrrrry raw but the kid played really well in big games. With Martellus Bennett in a contract year and last year’s tight end add A.J. Derby failing to make any impression on the field because of rookie year injuries, Scheu and Wilson will be interesting to track.
The Patriots liked the programs this year at Ole Miss (two undrafted guys – DT Woodrow Hamilton, and LB C.J. Johnson), Illinois (sixth-round guard Ted Karras and undrafted corner Ve’Angelo Bentley), Arizona State (seventh-round wideout Devin Lucien and the undrafted running back Foster) and NC State (third-rounders Brissett and Thuney).
New England Patriots
Finally, if you’d like your son to have a shot to play with the Patriots, put him on the cornerback track and hope he runs sub-4.6. Between third-rounder Cyrus Jones and four undrafted guys (Bentley, Texas A&M’s Devante Burns, Auburn’s Jonathan Jones and Florida Atlantic’s Cre’Von LeBlanc), the team keeps bringing cover guys into the program knowing that – every once in a while, they strike platinum as they did with Malcolm Butler. And even if they don’t hit on those guys and either have to move on from them or put them on practice squad, the cornerback need is always great and these players will have been worked with by the staff and gone through a Patriots orientation of sorts so that – down the line – their phones may ring again with a 508 area code on the other end.