NFL Draft 2024: Experts grade the Patriots 2024 draft class

This may be a bold claim to make, but I’ll say it with my chest:

It seems more likely than not that the New England Patriots will not lead the NFL with five (5) games with zero (0) touchdowns scored in the 2024 season.

Whether you believe in drafting for need, best player available, or some you-know-it-when-you-see-it amalgamation of the two philosophies, that “enough games with zero trips to the endzone that you need all the fingers on one hand to count them all” is the baseline we’re starting from here. This was the offense that was comfortably last in the NFL in points scored, and for all the advanced metrics and efficiency this and EPA per play that and DVOA and DYAR and all the rest, it’s kind of hard to win without, you know, scoring points. And while football is more than just collecting Pokemon every offseason, the last couple years of the Bill Belichick era proved with an exclamation point that a disturbing lack of talent will render any amount of coaching borderline useless.

In the meantime, if you’re going to have a season from hell like the Patriots did in 2023, you may as well enjoy being on the other side of the NFL’s parity curve for once. With picks in the tippy-top of each round, the kind that are usually reserved for the Panthers and the AFC South, the approach Jerod Mayo and Eliot Wolf took this offseason looks a lot clearer when viewed as a mostly-complete body of work:

1. Re-sign almost everyone on a very, very good defense and your 3 players on offense that were objectively worth keeping, and
2. When free agency didn’t turn out to be the best route to leveling up the offense overnight (sorry, Jacoby Brissett), you turn to the draft, and if the board breaks your way, simply keep throwing resources at the problem.

So with that in mind, let’s check out what kind of marks the draftniks are giving the New England Patriots Class of 2024. We can save the “on a scale of 1-Lombardi #7, how back are the New England Patriots?” for another day this offseason when we’re really, really bored.

National Media

Danny Kelly (The Ringer): A

THE PATRIOTS DID EXACTLY WHAT YOU’D HOPE A TEAM THAT NEEDS TO REBUILD ITS OFFENSE FROM THE GROUND UP WOULD DO IN THIS DRAFT. With their first pick, New England nabbed my second-ranked quarterback in Drake Maye—then quickly went to work finding him some much-needed support. De facto GM Eliot Wolf grabbed one of my favorite receivers in this class in the second round, drafting a do-it-all pass catcher in Ja’Lynn Polk at no. 37. He turned around in the third round and selected an athletic offensive tackle, Caedan Wallace, then added offensive guard Layden Robinson and receiver Javon Baker in the fourth round. I especially like the Baker pick; he’s a twitchy route runner who can get vertical and separate. New England also...