2023 NFL Draft: Patriots must have a real ‘consensus’ draft

The New England Patriots draft record is about average or below, but could be a lot better if they just did one thing.

The Patriots like to think they are smarter than everyone else in the draft when most of the time they are not.

That attitude exposes itself virtually every year in April when they confound the draft cognoscenti by drafting players much higher than anyone else on the planet thought they should.

It’s an attitude that works well only when you have the ultimate safety valve, Mr. TB12, Tom Brady himself on hand to save you from yourself. It worked for 20 years in Foxborough but Bill Belichick and company actually thought it was them all the time. Go figure!

Now, it’s clear for all to see that poor personnel mismanagement will derail any team that happens to find itself without a top-tier quarterback. And as for Tom Brady, he’s at the top of all the top-tier quarterbacks who ever laced up a cleat.

So let’s explore what a consensus draft is and why it could really benefit the New England Patriots, if, and only if, they finally use it.

New England Patriots have to get real in the draft

The New England Patriots are poor drafters, for the most part, the virulent defenders of the “In Bill we trust” crowd notwithstanding. When you have Tom Brady, it works. When you don’t, mediocrity sets in.

This dynamic seems to have been embodied in a bizarre draft strategy that would baffle even the most ardent supporters. Mike Reiss of ESPN exposed the same some time ago.

In addition to the purported “strategy”, the team also is prone to reaching for players well before the NFL consensus feels they should be reasonably drafted. Two cases in point happened last season in the 2022 draft.

The New England Patriots select, “Cole Strange, Guard, University of Tennessee-Chattanooga.” Talk about hitting the ground stumbling.

Strange was rated primarily as third-round talent. But, the all-knowing Patriots thought they just had to draft him in the first round, after an actually astute trade down to gain more picks. Problem was, they could have traded down two, three or maybe even four more times and still get Strange.

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It was a gaffe of monumental proportions and the Champion (at the time) Los Angeles Rams literally laughed out loud at the pick on national TV. Just a tad embarrassing, don’t you think?

Must have been just what owner Robert Kraft was hoping for after issuing a scathing slap at the New England Patriots’ subpar drafting for most of the previous five years.

Strange played pretty well for much of the season (though he did get benched), but was the guard worth a first-round pick? No way. Especially when he could have/would have been there in the second or maybe even the third round.

New England Patriots have to get real in the draft

After taking Strange, not to be denied, the Patriots then selected a wide receiver in the second round who was routinely projected to the third or fourth, Tyquan Thornton from Baylor. He rewarded the team with a lackluster rookie season.

So, with these in mind (just the latest “horror reaches” in the team’s recent history), what do they need to do in the fast-approaching 2023 NFL draft?

The answer is not complicated and it’s not rocket science. The answer is, to go with the flow. Evaluate the draft as most of the other teams in the league do based on CONSENSUS, not CONJECTURE.

All draft picks are risks, from the first to Mr. Irrelevant, the last. Don’t make the draft any more difficult than it already is reaching for players who no one else thinks are as good as you do.

The draft is always a crapshoot. Yet, when you “reach” in the draft, most often you will shoot snake eyes and fail miserably.

So, the advice to the New England Patriots is this, for once, draft players where most of the informed feel they should be drafted, not a round, two or three earlier. The guess here is, it will work out just fine.