2025 Patriots Draft Preview
With the 4th pick in the 2025 NFL Draft the New England Patriots select...........
Step one of the Patriots rebuild was to spend some of Robert Kraft’s money, as well as Eliot Wolf’s unused cap space from last season and try to plug as many holds in the Patriots porous roster as we could. This step went pretty well, mostly for the defensive side of the ball. The most glaring gaps in the Patriots player portfolio was offensive line, wide receiver and their general lack of impact playmakers across the board.
The defense was addressed, Milton Williams, Robert Spillane, Harold Landry and Carlton Davis have me very excited. Add them to a core group led by (hopefully) Christian Barmore, Keion White, Kyle Dugger and Christian Gonzalez, and you have the makings of a group of stout-hearted men. (And don’t forget, Jahlani Tavai is good.)
On offense, we got outfoxed at every turn. We coveted Ravens LT Ronnie Stanley and they waited until 24 hours before we could legally tamper with him and Baltimore signed him to a new deal. Chris Godwin made it to tampering, but wasn’t willing to leave Tamper Bay. So we set out on a odyssey to find a protector and a target for Drake Maye. What we came back with was RT Morgan Moses and Stefon Diggs, playing on his third team in as many seasons. Now, I don’t hate the signings, they are professional football players, which is more than what we have had in recent years, so they’re certainly an improvement, but heading into this NFL Draft on Thursday, we have work to do.
The mantra that I keep repeating as I read draft guides and listen to podcasts, are the words of the great Daniel Jeremiah, who said “You have to shop at the hardware store before you can shop at the toy store.” This been very helpful, because this is one of the wildest and most volatile top 5 in a draft that I can remember and the Patriots are sitting just outside of the cat-bird seat: in a good position, but still at the whim of the maniacs in front of them. How wild is this year’s top 5?
Here is what we know: the Titans love Miami QB Cam Ward and will take him number one. We all sort of knew that last week and then on his Twitch channel (which is like YouTube for watching someone else play video games live, as I am to believe) and Ward was asked to list the top 4 receivers in the NFL. Ward went with: Ja’Marr Chase (Good), Justin Jefferson (YUP), Calvin Ridley (wait, what?) and Treylon Burks (I just spit out my coffee.) In case you forgot, Ridley and Burks play for the Tennessee Titans, and barely make the top 4 receivers on that team. (They do, but only because they have very little competition in Music City.)
So Ward is going to the Titans, that brings up the Cleveland Browns. The Browns currently have Kenny Pickett and Joe Flacco to play quarterback for them this season. (Unless a lot of judges, lawyers and 340 million Americans get real okay with a lot of bad stuff real quick, then they might have DeShaun Watson.) The second best QB on the board is Shedeur Sanders (you know, Deion’s son). Now folks sure are split on what they think of him, some have him going as high as the 2nd pick and some have him going as low as the 2nd round. Rarely do we see a draft where the top two quarterbacks could either go back to back or a round apart. What do the Browns think of Sanders? That’s anybody’s guess.
That brings us to the 3rd pick and the New York football Giants. They have a gluttony of quarterbacks, and if they were playing in the Camp Fair Haven Turkey Bowl, they’d be tough to beat. (Depending on if the Potvin family shows up, or how good my team is, which was always predicated by how many of the Pennington brothers had gotten their deer already. If their freezers were stocked, so was our secondary!) They are employing Russell Wilson and Jameis Winston at quarterback these days and you know what they say, if you have two over the top Christian quarterbacks on your roster, you don’t have one, which is probably a good thing because if you did King Solomon would probably try to cut that quarterback in half, giving you a loaded back field (two halfbacks) and unless the King is going to step under center, you still don’t have a quarterback. To recap, the Giants have two quarterbacks that could play this season, but not one that the fans will pay to watch. (Tommy DeVito has a higher approval rating amongst Giants fans and I think I speak for NFL fans in general in that we just want Jameis to have a job because he makes the league more fun. As long as he isn’t starting for your team.)
You’re saying to yourself, “why wouldn’t the Browns or Giants take Sanders and how does this impact the Patriots?”
To me and to many who pay attention to things like the NFL Annual Collegiate Player Draft, there are two clear cut, blue chip prizes on the table: Penn St edge rusher Abdul Carter and Colorado Shohei Ohtani cornerback/wide receiver, Heisman winner Travis Hunter. These are the ultimate toys for the New England Patriots. Are either exactly what the Patriots need? The answers are no, and maybe?
Abdul Carter has been called an elite type of prospect and has been compared to Cowboys stud, Micah Parsons. (On account of them playing the same role at Penn St and looking eerily similar to one another in a football uniform. Carter is the type of game changing defensive player that even if defense or edge rusher isn’t an area of need for your roster, you still need an Abdul Carter on your roster. He’s the type of player you can only pass up if need a quarterback and one is available. The Patriots have one, so could we be free to draft an Abdul Carter without the guilt? Again, maybe.
Travis Hunter is an even more difficult case. He plays receiver, he plays cornerback. Some say he’s going to be a defensive back in the NFL. Others say that his production as a wide receiver is overlooked and if he became a full-time offensive player in the league, that he would be a Garrett Wilson type playmaker. Hunter says he wants to continue playing both ways like he did at Colorado, enroute to playing over 100 snaps a game and winning the aforementioned Heisman Trophy. The Patriots have two very good outside corners (Gonzalez and Davis) and King of the Jones Power Rankings Mountain (Marcus) as the slot corner. So the question becomes is Travis Hunter the blue chip, #1 receiver/weapon that you want to pair with Drake Maye? Again, again the answer is: maybe.
Now that we have dog eared pages and circled items in the Sears Wish Book (not a sponsor) we should pause and peruse the Home Depot flyer for things we actually need. What the Patriots need is a left tackle and there is a pretty good one on the block: LSU stud Will Campbell. Campbell is 6’6”, 323lbs and started all 3-years at LSU and is a consensus All-American last year. The Monroe, Louisiana native is the nasty type of tackle who smears more grease paint on his cheeks than the Duck Dynasty boys on a Saturday morning hunt.
The one knock on Campbell is that his arms are short. 33” is considered fine, Campbells came in at (brace yourself) 32 3/8th inches. (GASP!) I for one can overlook this, because there isn’t anyone who questions his performance on the field, or his projected ability to translate that talent at the next level.
There is a viral video going around last week of Campbell squatting over 600lbs at LSU. As he steps away from the rack, with this insane amount of weight on his back, Campbell calmly winks at the camera, before successfully repping the weight, to the cheers and hollers of his teammates. To quote the great Neal McCoy, “All he has to do is just a gimme that wink!” Hell, if he went by Wink Campbell, we may not even be having this conversation, his selection would be a foregone conclusion.
In a way, Campbell feels a bit like taking your medicine. But since Trent Brown’s play declined, they have had a difficult time finding a left tackle, let alone a franchise left tackle. Campbell might be that guy that you draft at 4 and write into your line up for the next decade. This is what the Patriots need, because rolling the dice with trying to hit on a 2nd, 3rd or 4th round offensive line prospect hasn’t led us anywhere the last few drafts.
Draft rumor: our old pal Fitzy dropped a bomb of a rumor on Friday. That if Abdul Carter was still on the board when the Patriots select at pick #4, that the Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles would trade Pro Bowl wide receiver (and noted Patriots fan) AJ Brown and picks for the right to draft Abdul Carter. Fitzy, not necessarily known as a news breaker, said he has sources that let him know that this is possible. And it very well could be, the Eagles have been tied closely to Micah Parsons since he came into the league, might they want to get in on the ground floor of Parsons 2.0? Possibly, the only thing that I have a hard time wrapping my head around is that the Eagles defense is very good, do they need to add a guy like Carter? Especially if it means losing an elite level pass catcher like Brown?
There is more up in the air as it pertains to the top of this draft, than in any year I can remember. Ward will go one and then who knows? The Browns could take Sanders, or they could take a defensive star like Carter to pair with the only thing they have going for them, Myles Garrett. What will the Giants do? They feel like a team that would love to draft a guy like Hunter, let him do whatever he wants and use him and Malik Nabers to try to prop up Wilson/Winston. His dynamic skill set feels like it would play well in Gotham. Then the Patriots take their medicine, they can’t trade back, collect picks and get Campbell, because I don’t think there are teams that would trade up for anybody other than Hunter and Carter. So the Patriots take Campbell and rest easy knowing that if the season started on Sunday, they would have 5 players to line up and protect Drake Maye.
My official prediction is
1. Cam Ward- Titans
2. Abdul Carter- Browns
3. Travis Hunter- Giants
4. Will Campbell- Patriots
But if the Browns or Giants go off script and take Shedeur Sanders and the Patriots have the chance to snatch a blue chip off the table, whether it’s Abdul Carter or Travis Hunter, I think you have to do it.
On The Office, Meredith verbally RSVP’d to Jim and Pam’s wedding and for her entrée said she’d have “whatever is fanciest, unless there’s ribs.” For the NFL Draft, I’m making the Meredith Palmer order: I’ll have Will Campbell, unless there is Carter or Hunter.