What Positions Do the Patriots Need to Draft the Most?
The Patriots have certainly fallen quite far from the old New England teams with Tom Brady who could make seemingly any player work in their system. This team is deprived of raw and young talent. Last year, they made the first step in the right direction by drafting their apparent quarterback of the future Drake Maye, but he can’t lead this team to success alone. With a new head coach set to take over the franchise, what positions do the Patriots need to focus on in this upcoming draft to continue to rebuild effectively?
1. Wide Receiver
If you ask most casual NFL fans, they probably couldn’t name a single current New England Patriots wide receiver. In today’s NFL, teams need to be able to effectively throw the ball out wide to their dynamic wide receivers. If the Patriots are expecting Drake Maye to develop and gain some confidence, they need to get him several playmakers at the wide receiver position to make Maye’s job easier. If we look at Jayden Daniels' success this year, it isn’t a stretch to say that Terry McLauren made his job a lot easier at times. Hitting on multiple wide receivers could go a long way toward correcting the course of this offense.
2. Edge Rusher
With the loss of Matthew Judon this year after trading him to Atlanta, this pass rush never looked the same. They were the worst in the league at getting to the quarterback and as a result, they got torched on defense. This team has historically always been good at getting solid pass rush without premier pass rushers, but that was with Bill Belichick coaching the team. Now Mike Vrabel might be able to bring back some of that defensive intensity that those old Belichick teams had but it would also help to finally get some dynamic pass rushers into the mix to help remedy this problem.
3. Linebacker
If there is one position that Mike Vrabel should be able to effectively coach, it should be linebacker, because it was his former position. The Patriots’ current linebacking core is slow and not highly dynamic. In today’s NFL, linebackers are asked to do a lot of things including keep up with excellent running backs and scrambling quarterbacks. Linebackers today need to be fast. Luckily, this is a position that the Patriots can target later in the draft and still get excellent value.
