Patriots top 5 positional needs to address in the new league year

New England Patriots and the Punter/kicker position

As if the likely retirement of Matthew Slater wasn’t enough, The New England Patriots need to upgrade two more specialists for 2023.

Brendan Schooner looks like a suitable heir to Slater’s role. But at punter and kicker, the Patriots don’t have potential replacements on the roster.

Let’s start with punter. We thought Jake Bailey was having a bad year. His average punt was down by 5.2 yards from 2021 to ’22, and his net yards per punt were down by 6.8 yards.

Then Bailey went on injured reserve and Michael Palardy made Bailey look good. Though Palardy’s averages were slightly better, the number of bad punts is why New England needs a better, more consistent punter.

Nick Folk’s performance declined as well. After two seasons of converting better than 92 percent of his field goals, his accuracy dropped to 86.5 percent. For an offense that oftentimes struggled to score, a kicker you can’t count on to salvage some points out of stalled drives is a problem.

And for the third year in a row, Folk missed at least three extra points, which is getting annoying. Especially when they happened in two of the last three games of the season. Folk missed two against the Cincinnati Bengals, a game the Patriots lost by four. New England could had kicked a game-winning field goal late in the game, instead of Rhamondre Stevenson’s fumble sealing the Patriots’ fate.

Folk’s lack of range is also starting to catch up to him. Nailing 80 percent from 50-plus yards is excellent, but the Patriots know they can’t count on Folk long, especially in less than ideal conditions.

Both positions can be addressed with a late draft selection or New England can go the rookie free agent route.