Congratulations are in Order to Eliot Wolf for Adding Two Players Who Were the Lowest Graded at Their Positions in 2024

Stacy Revere. Getty Images.

I am bound and determined to be more optimistic about the New England Patriots going forward. Which is to say I'm determined. (I'll keep my own council about the last time I was bound with anything, thankyouverymuch.) Seriously, sometimes when I'm writing these posts I feel like I'm outside my own body and someone else is controlling the keyboard. I'm just that broken. This is what back-to-back 4-13s and winning 10 of their last 41 games (.243 in that span) has done to me. 

But still. A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do. Even as I do my best to, borrowing Jerod Mayo's favorite metaphor, looking out the windshield at the road ahead, the mushroom cloud of hot radioactive dust that was 2024 is still filling up the back window. And until we put some distance between it and us, we still have to concern ourselves with it. 

Which brings us to the analytics. You might think that just because the Patriots had the fourth worst record in the league, they had some of the worst players in football. And you'd be entirely correct in the assumption. [Hat tip to MSN.]

In fact, two of Eliot Wolf's acquisitions were dead last at their positions according to Pro Football Focus (paywall) grading:

WR Ja'Lynn Polk, 2nd round pick, 37th overall:

PFF Ranking: 133rd out of 133 wide receivers graded. Grade: 43.1. Yards: 87, 277th in the league. Targets: 31. Receptions: 12. Rec %: 38.7, 201st in the league.

OT Demontrey Jacobs, free agent:

Advertisement

PFF Ranking: 81st out of 81 tackles to qualify. Grade: 38.4. Run blocking ranking: 85th out of 87. Pass blocking ranking: 83rd out of 87. Games: 15. Pass blocking snaps: 566. Sacks: 9, 4th most among tackles. QB Hits: 7, 10th most. Hurries: 33, 5th most. Total pressures: 49, 4th most. Efficiency: 94.4%, 80th. Penalties: 11, 13th most.

To be fair to Jacobs, it's hardly his fault. He was not the 37th pick. He was a UDFA in 2023 who never saw the field for Denver. He took his first 14 career snaps in relief during the Week 3 game against the Jets. That would be the week before he was put on an island against Joey Bosa that I was bellyaching about in that X post.  From then on, he played in 14 games, starting 13 of them. And finished second on the team in offensive snaps behind only Michael Onwenu. 

These two are just the most blatant and egregious examples of Wolf's roster building blunders. Here are a few more guys who finished near the bottom at their positions:

G Layden Robinson: 74th out of 77

LT Vederian Lowe: 69th out of 81

QB2 Jacoby Brissett: 40th out of 44

LB Jahlani Tavai: 69th out of 81

S Kyle Dugger: 96th out of 98

You might want to give him a pass and put all the blame on Mayo. The Wolf himself has already sort of danced around that explanation. But nevertheless, these are all the guys he scouted, evaluated, drafted, signed, or re-signed. And out of the entire roster he constructed, the only two players to crack the Top 10 at their respective positions were Jabrill Peppers (5th) and Austin Hooper (6th). 

That's quite an indictment, no matter how terrible the coaching might have been. The good news is that Mike Vrabel now gets final say on all personnel moves:

And he's bringing Ryan Cowden with him from the staff he assembled in Tennessee:

Advertisement

Now here's where I stop looking back in anger and start to peer through the windshield, my eyes on the road. Whatever happens in 2025, they can't possibly do worse than this.