In this year’s NFL draft, it’s looking like the first real point of intrigue is with the New England Patriots and the third overall pick.
This much seems clear after last week’s NFL scouting combine: The widespread belief around the league is that the Chicago Bears will draft a quarterback at no. 1—likely USC’s Caleb Williams. The Commanders, who are also widely presumed to be taking a quarterback, would then select their passer with the second pick. There has been some speculation that Washington could be enamored enough of Williams, who is from the D.C. area, went to high school there, and played for new Commanders offensive coordinator Kliff Kingsbury in college, to try to trade up and switch picks with Chicago to take him, but that would still leave a closed loop where the first two quarterbacks would go off the board with the first two picks.
In that case, for New England and the other 29 teams, the draft would start in earnest with the third pick.
Coming out of the combine in Indianapolis last week, there was quite a bit of scuttlebutt—and solid local reporting from Patriots beat writers—suggesting that New England has zeroed in on drafting a quarterback at no. 3. If that’s definitely the case, then the pivot point would come with the Cardinals and the fourth pick.
I left Indy feeling skeptical, though, that the Patriots have decided what they want to do in their first draft of the post–Bill Belichick era.
The most significant reason I doubt they’ve made a choice is that it is just too early for most teams to be at that point. This New England front office has been in place for less than two months, and they just met several players in this draft class for the first time at the combine. If the Patriots do draft a quarterback, it’s very likely to be either LSU’s Jayden Daniels or UNC’s Drake Maye, whoever does not go second overall. In Daniels’s case, one (if not the biggest) question New England would have to answer to feel confident spending its pick on him would be whether it feels his body is sturdy enough to hold up against NFL defenses in an offense that would take advantage of his physical tools as a runner: His Heisman-winning season in 2023 included 1,134 rushing yards and 10 rushing touchdowns. His slight frame (he was listed by LSU, perhaps generously, at 210 pounds) could make that kind of workload risky at the next level. And Daniels hasn’t been weighed by NFL evaluators yet!
The other reason is that the Patriots have every incentive to suggest to anyone who will listen that they’re planning to take a quarterback. That’s what gets the phones ringing. This is considered a class with three elite quarterback prospects at the top, so getting the message out that they’re planning to take the third one off the board tells any team who’d like a shot at whoever is left of Williams, Maye, and Daniels to make their best offer. Those offers just won’t be as rich if teams think they’d be trading up to jump ahead of a team drafting wide receiver Marvin Harrison Jr. This is a good draft at receiver and offensive line—two position groups where the Patriots have dire needs. Maybe that means they’d feel confident staying put at no. 3, taking the best receiver, and stocking up on linemen in later rounds. But if that’s not the case and they want some extra picks, it’s always a good idea to drive up the price.
All that said, not having decided whether they’d like to draft a quarterback with the third pick does not mean they won’t do it. If they haven’t made that decision yet, though, then predicting what the Patriots will do becomes more about analyzing processes than about gathering information. And analyzing New England’s draft process is particularly interesting in their first draft that isn’t being run by Belichick in 25 years.
If there’s one main process-related takeaway from the combine about how the Patriots are going about this draft, it’s that consensus opinion might be a more powerful factor in New England’s draft room going forward than it has been in the past.
The Patriots do not have a general manager in title, but director of scouting Eliot Wolf is leading the department and said in Indianapolis that he will have the final say on whom New England will draft. Though the Patriots are reportedly considering conducting a search for a general manager after the draft, the job seems like Wolf’s to lose. It’s hard to imagine the organization would trust him to run such a pivotal draft and spend $89 million in cap space this free agency only to later demote him.
Wolf has also been empowered to make changes in how the personnel department does its evaluations. He described some of those changes in Indianapolis in ways that indicated New England might become a bit less of a draft outlier under his leadership than it was under Belichick.
One item that stood out to me from Wolf’s press conference was that he has changed the grading system that the scouting department uses for prospects. While he didn’t go into detail, Wolf said the new system would make for better apples-to-apples comparisons between players, whereas the old system led to more individual evaluations. While that practice sometimes helped the Patriots focus on exactly what a prospect did best, it didn’t always factor in where they were likely to fall on other teams’ boards, which could lead to overdrafting.
“The previous Patriot system was more ‘This is what the role is,’ and this is more kind of value-based,” Wolf said. “So I think it makes it a lot easier for scouts to rate guys and put them in a stack of, like, this guy’s the best, this guy’s the worst, and everything in between falls into place rather than sort of more nuanced approaches. I just think it accounts [for] value better, and it also makes it easier for the scouts in the fall as well as in the spring to determine where guys would get drafted.”
This is a departure. The Patriots were a bit of a draft wild card throughout the Belichick era. The most famous recent example was in 2022, when New England drafted offensive lineman Cole Strange in the first round, far ahead of where he was on most mock drafts or other teams’ boards. There have been others—in 2015, they took safety Jordan Richards, widely considered to be a late-round pick, in the second round; in 2020, they used a third-round pick on tight end Dalton Keene, whom most projections had as a day-three prospect. In another world, where Belichick is still at the helm in 2024, it’s easy to imagine New England defying conventional wisdom (and messing up everyone’s mocks) by taking Notre Dame tackle Joe Alt or some hybrid defensive back instead of a quarterback at no. 3, because Belichick really liked the player and chose to ignore the fact that they probably could have selected him later on.
Under Wolf, New England may draft more in line with consensus value. In the end, if that’s the case, that probably does point to an eventual quarterback selection—likely whoever is left between Maye and Daniels. NBC Sports Boston’s Phil Perry wrote that while Daniels has the better film, the Patriots were impressed with Maye after meeting him in Indianapolis. That’s significant; leadership traits seem to be a priority after the relationship with Mac Jones soured as much as it did. (When Wolf said the Patriots wouldn’t want a quarterback who was “throwing his hands up after a bad play,” it sounded a lot like he was talking about Jones.) Particularly if it takes a quarterback and passes up the chance to fill more roster holes with additional draft picks by trading down, New England will want that player to be able to handle taking some lumps early on—no matter who is under center, this is still an offense with a glaring need at left tackle, more potential offensive line questions if Michael Onwenu leaves in free agency, the weakest receiver room in the league, and a new coaching staff. In some ways, that might bolster the argument for drafting a young player like Maye—and it would make sense for a rookie quarterback to sit behind a veteran for some period of time.
Again, it’s my belief that nothing is decided at this point. So much will change in the weeks ahead. But so much of what comes next in New England will hinge on how this new brain trust tries to replicate—or overhaul—how the franchise operated in the Belichick era. And how the Patriots are approaching the third pick seems like a sign of change.
