No Sweat? Patriots Address Three Biggest Needs With Top Picks
Well, that was easy.
The New England Patriots entered the 2024 NFL Draft with three clear needs: quarterback, offensive tackle and wide receiver. While some debated the order of those three, the positions themselves were never up for debate.
Through the first three rounds of the NFL draft, the Patriots selected players to address those areas. It started Thursday night with the obvious decision to select quarterback Drake Maye, who alone jumpstarts the rebuild at One Patriot Place. It continued Friday night when the organization wisely used its second-round pick on a wide receiver rather than an offensive tackle. The Patriots drafted wideout Ja’Lynn Holt at No. 37 before they selected offensive lineman Caedan Wallace at No. 68.
Both Wolf and Wallace feel strongly the Penn State product will be able to play the left tackle spot.
It’s like Wolf, in his first year running the show, never even broke a sweat. If anything, Wolf actually looked well-versed in the whole thing. Good genes, maybe? He manipulated the board when he traded three spots down in the second round after he had intel no team was competing for Polk. Wolf said Polk would have been New England’s pick at No. 34, but the Patriots traded back to No. 37 and selected the Washington wideout, and in turn turned a fifth-rounder into a fourth-rounder with a 27-spot jump.
“It fell really nicely for us,” Wolf said during a video conference. “Polk was a guy we had targeted; Wallace was a guy we had targeted.”
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If you’re being honest with yourself, it served as a nice change of pace from recent Bill Belichick drafts, too. There was no trading down in the first round just to acquire more picks — picks that were no sure things themselves. There was no reaching on Cole Strange-like selections, either. Nope, it’s unlikely there will be a viral video of an NFL team mocking the Patriots this time around.
This isn’t to say we’ll reflect on the 2024 draft class in five years and give the Patriots an A-plus. Could that be the case? Sure. But who knows. These three players could all prove to be flops, and in that case the Patriots would be in an even worse spot than they are now coming off a 4-13 season.
Regardless of that, there is something to be said about the process thus far. As Wolf expressed, the Patriots narrowed down and targeted specific players and showed conviction when they drafted them.
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“We had some exploratory conversations about possibly moving back from 68, and then, it was just kind of like, ‘Well, why? This is the guy that we had wanted all along,'” Wolf said in reference to Wallace. “So, sometimes it doesn’t fall for you; it fell pretty nicely for us today.”
When speaking about Polk, Wolf added: “He’s a guy that we had our eye on for a while.”
Patriots fans should take comfort knowing the team’s brass drafted players it spent months studying, evaluating and ultimately pin-pointing as good fits.
The Patriots still have work to do. They shouldn’t be done weaponizing the offense, despite the fact that’s the only side of the ball they’ve drafted for thus far. But they’re off to a good start through three rounds. And it’s because of how they’ve played the board and attacked their biggest areas of need.