Eliot Wolf Planted His Flag in the Patriots War Room, Drafting for Needs, Superhuman Athletes and Cocky WRs
I appreciate that my colleague Steven Cheah gave the Patriots an A grade on this draft. Sincerely. And his opinion seems to be at least in the general vicinity of the consensus. NFL.com gave them a B. Pro Football Focus gave them a B+. CBS Sports an A, and so on. This year's War Room performance is pretty much in that top range where you saw the smartest, hardest working students you graduated with, or anyone with a pulse at an Ivy League school. So good on them.
But like I've pointed out before, the world has an awful completion percentage when it comes to handing out letter grades to Pats drafts the day they wrap up. The 2022 draft that produced impact rookies Cole Strange, Jack Jones, Marcus Jones and Bailey Zappe got the lowest grade in the league. Inversely, the dog's breakfast served up in 2019 (the N'Keal Harry year) got the highest:
I'd call draft evaluation an inexact science if that wasn't an insult to science. It's more like inexact Divination. Reading tea leaves and bumps on heads in a class run by a woman with crippling mental health issues who shouldn't be within a mile of school children.
For me, this particular draft was not about evaluating the selections. It was about the selector. About getting a handle on Eliot Wolf and how he plans on rebuilding this franchise, assuming he keeps the job beyond this draft.
As I and literally every Pats fan I know have been saying all offseason, it's felt like the way the Wolf-Mayo regime has been a validation of everything Bill Belichick did. They stayed conservative in free agency, shopping for bargains, sales, mark downs and BOGO deals. They've re-signed more than a half dozen of his recent draft picks and free agent signings, and are reportedly already working on a deal for Christian Barmore, a year before his rookie deal is up. So it's been meet the new boss, same as the old boss to this point.
Which is all well and good. I didn't spend two decades shamelessly supporting every decision GM Bill made just to want to see a total reversal. But it's begged the question of why the man had to be replaced, just so they could stick to his his philosophy, practices and methods. (While he's still on the payroll, I should add.) Why make the change if you're not going to, you know, change?
Well this draft answered those questions. We finally got to see the difference between Wolf's approach to acquiring college talent and his predecessors. For better or worse (and we'll find out eventually which it is) there's no way this would've unfolded under GM Bill than it did under GM Ron. Let us count the ways:
Drafting for need.
Belichick is a famous Best Player Available Guy. He established that right from his first drafts, when the good people of New England, who still hadn't gotten accustomed to his belief system, wanted him to draft "weapons" for Drew Bledsoe, and he went instead with Richard Seymour (Hall of Fame) and Matt Light (team Hall of Fame) and pretty regularly addressed the skill positions in the mid- to late rounds (see David Givens). Often this approach resulted in what felt like redundant picks, like Dont'a Hightower, Devin McCourty, and a slew of other Rutgers DBs. But those worked out. Other times it didn't. Like taking Dominique Easley and Malcom Brown in the 1st in back-to-back years.
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But Wolf very much seemed to identify the biggest holes in his roster and try to fill them this weekend. He went QB, WR, OT, OG, and WR in the first four rounds, adding five players to the NFL's worst offense. And adding just one to the league's 8th best scoring defense. This is the classic template every fanbase without a quarterback longs for. Taking your new QB1 and building around him. It's the conventional approach, for once. And as I said when the new brain trust took over, "under the new regime, I'd rather take my hits and misses going with the conventional wisdom than with the unconventional irrationality."
Sticking with the picks he had.
It was almost surreal to see the Pats go on the clock time and time again, and almost immediately see "The pick is in" chyron. Beginning with Drake Maye, where they almost disproved Einstein's constant with how fast their selection traveled. But since there were no surprises at Nos. 1 and 2, that made sense. Beyond that, it was unnerving to a fanbase not used to it to see a calm, conservative approach. The picks came up. They were made. You waited for the next one. It was more like the way your online Fantasy draft unfolds than The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror ride we've been accustomed to. The only exception was trading back from No. 34 to 37 in exchange for a move up from the 5th round to the 4th. Which was the kind of thing Belichick always did just to warm up his trading shoulder. And as Wolf said, they planned to take WR Ja'Lynn Polk anyway and were confident he'd still be there three picks later. Speaking of wideouts:
Drafting a wide receiver of supreme confidence.
By now you've no doubt met Javon Baker. If not, strap yourself in. It's going to be wild having this rookie around:
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Holy cats. Look, I'm not saying Belichick would never have drafted a player with Baker's mindset. Actually, that's exactly what I'm saying. Honestly, try to recall one guy who was this publicly confident, bordering on outright cockiness. I can't think of one. Hell, he called Rob Gronkowski five minutes after they drafted him to tell him to get himself and his family off the damned stage and quit dancing around like a bunch of lunatics. I do everything in my power to avoid using the word "swagger" because in 2002 HC Bill blasted his entire team because someone used it to describe how they were starting to play better. And he told everyone to take the word and shove it up their asses. But how can you not use "swagger" to describe what Baker is bringing to the table? Now all he has to do is back it up and he'll sell a million jerseys around here.
He took an athlete the likes of whom we've never witnessed.
Joe Milton III was a late-round flyer, taken in the 6th round, 193rd overall. And all bets are off with picks like that. There's no harm in shooting for the moon. Which Milton could probably hit square in the middle of Tranquility Base:
And if anyone ever forms the National Citrus Fruit League, Milton is your consensus No. 1 pick:
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There have been some unique athletes to come through this franchise. Multi-skilled, versatile ones, rugby players, lacrosse players, a college wrestler who had never played football but lasted 10 seasons at guard, and some trackletes. But no one with Milton's metahuman abilities. Rookie camp can't some soon enough so we get to see what he can do in person.
No special teams picks.
You might argue that this contradicts my first point about Wolf drafting for need, since the Pats had the worst kicking game in the league last year. And to that I say, leave me alone, allow me to talk out both sides of my keyboard, and go write your own, paradox-free blog. As bad as Chad Ryland as a rookie, I was hoping Wolf would do this very thing. We've squandered entirely too much draft capital over the last however many years on kickers, punters, long snappers and gunners. Special teams specialists. It's genius when it turns into a Matthew Slater, a Stephen Gostkowski, or even say, a Bryce Baringer, who was the team's most potent offensive weapon last year (shudder). But there have been way too many Ryland- and Justin Rohrwasser-type picks, which could've been used on literally any other position. With few exceptions, the specialist you land on draft day aren't appreciably better than the UDFAs you sign in May and let battle it out with each other all summer.
So after all this, I'll give Eliot Wolf an Incomplete until all the assignments have been passed in and he passes the final. The good news is, in my class, extra credit is always accepted.