FOXBOROUGH, Mass. — The New England Patriots’ rookie class has been widely panned by draft analysts, with some scouts and executives across the NFL also sharing their viewpoint with ESPN that first-round pick Cole Strange and second-rounder Tyquan Thornton went earlier than their teams had anticipated.
“I just don’t think they got value with their first two picks this year,” ESPN senior draft analyst Mel Kiper Jr. wrote.
Fellow ESPN draft analyst Todd McShay echoed those thoughts, calling the Strange pick “eyebrow-raising” while noting he was his 77th-rated prospect overall.
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Jordan Reid, another ESPN draft analyst, rated Strange a third-round pick.
While everyone expressed respect for longtime coach Bill Belichick, and acknowledged that he could ultimately have the last laugh, the Patriots’ early draft work — and how it didn’t align with the boards of draft analysts or other teams — became a topic of discussion in some NFL circles.
What does it really mean?
Not much now. After all, there is no shortage of examples of the Patriots being widely praised after a draft, only to later learn the class didn’t produce the expected results (here’s one random example from 2019 — an A for what now looks more like a D draft).
So much happens between when a player is selected and the three-year window that most around the NFL believe is the benchmark for when a draft can be most fairly analyzed.
How the players are coached and brought along in the system is critical. The mentality of how they take that coaching, and adjust to football as their full-time job, is equally important. Injuries are sometimes a factor.
So at this point, instead of a knee-jerk instant analysis of the Patriots’ draft class, perhaps a smarter approach is to de-emphasize the…
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