The Patriots are Targeting Mid-Round Offensive Linemen

The New England Patriots offensive line arguably cost the team the AFC Championship Game and the chance to play in back-to-back Super Bowls. The team’s draft strategy seems to be making sure that doesn’t happen again.

Screw the formalities – the Denver Broncos’ hellacious defense ruined Tom Brady’s life in this year’s AFC Championship Game, and yeah, whatever, football is a team sport and all that, but the team’s offensive line play was a worse disaster than the latest Walking Dead finale. The big boys up front let Tom Brady take TWENTY-THREE – count ‘em, 23 – as in Michael Jordan’s jersey number – quarterback hits, not to mention four outright sacks.

Not only that, but the Broncos team that blitzed, on average, on almost half their snaps (42% in 2015) barely had to send any extra heat to get pressure on Brady. In that game, the Broncos only blitzed on 16% of their defensive snaps.

16% of Denver’s snaps sent extra rushers, and they STILL hit Brady 23 times and sacked him 4 times.

Yikes.

That’s some piss-poor pocket protection.

But there is good news! If the Patriots and their meetings, interviews, and workouts with 2016 draft picks are any clue, there’s probably going to be some help on the way to turn that Frankenstein offensive line into a Franken-FINE.

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Thanks to Pats Pulpit’s handy Draft Contact Tracker, we can see every player that’s piquing the Patriots’ interest in the form of campus visits, Combine interviews, Pro Days, and bowl games. As they tend to do, the Patriots are all over the place with the players they’re looking into. Here’s a few of the players the Patriots have talked to that the casual college football fan will probably know right off the bat:

-Derrick Henry (Alabama, running back)
–Michael Thomas (Ohio State, wide receiver)
-Su’a Cravens (Southern California, linebacker)
-Pharoah Cooper (South Carolina, wide receiver)
-Kevin Hogan (Stanford, quarterback)
-Keenan Reynolds (Navy, quarterback)

Since the Patriots’ first chance to pick is at pick number 60, the odds of a lot of those guys, especially guys like Derrick Henry and Michael Thomas, will be long gone. Both of those two are projected to be either first or second-round picks, depending who you ask, so unless they take a tumble on draft day, that’s not happening for New England. BUT, in the instance that a player lasts way longer than pretty much every draft expert expects them to, at least the Pats have done their homework.

Here’s where the offensive line connection comes in.

Guess how many offensive line players the Patriots have met with that have a first-round draft grade?

Zero.

BUT.

According to the draft tracker we linked to earlier, New England has met with a whopping 11 offensive linemen so far – and all but three of them are projected to go in rounds 2, 3, and 4.

In other words, the Belichick and friends aren’t even bothering to look at big-name offensive line players that are going to be long gone on Day 1 anyway. They’re not talking to the Laremy Tunsils, the Ronnie Stanleys, or the Jack Conklins, who are the top 3 O-line picks in the draft per WalterFootball.com. They’re scouting players that, you know, they might actually have a realistic chance to draft.

Here’s the full list of offensive linemen that the Patriots have been interested in, as of April 6^th, 2016, and their projected draft round:

Texas Tech OT Le’Raven Clark, 2-3rd round

Auburn OT Shon Coleman, 2-3rd round

Louisiana State OT Jerald Hawkins, 2-3rd round

North Dakota State OT Joe Haeg, 3-4th round

Stanford OT Kyle Murphy, 3-4th round

Harvard OT Cole Toner, 3-4th round

Baylor OT Spencer Drango, 3-4th round

Missouri C Evan Boehm, 4-5th round

South Carolina OT Brandon Shell, 5-6th round

Alabama State OG Damian Love, UDFA

Hampton OT Torian White, UDFA

And there’s more – the Patriots have back-to-back picks in the second round, thanks to the Arizona Cardinals sending New England their second-round pick as part of the Chandler Jones trade. In total, New England has 11 picks, and seven of those are in the sixth or seventh rounds.

In Trader Bill-speak, that means plenty of currency to move the Patriots down – or up – the draft board as Belichick sees fit.

Oh, and one more thing, for the cranky people that will surely point out that New England drafted two mid-round offensive linemen last year (Tre Jackson and Shaq Mason), and the line still sucked:

Dante Scarnecchia is back.

Scar, you’ll remember, was the team’s offensive line coach until two years ago. And former Pats Matt Light and Logan Mankins, both Pro Bowl talents in their heyday, have basically said this week that if there’s anyone that can whip a young offensive line into Patriots-caliber shape, it’s Scarnecchia. It makes total sense that the team would want to give him some fresh talent to work with.

Unless, of course, the second round comes up and Belichick sees another safety he likes.

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