Pats Pulpit
The New England Patriots entered Tuesday 23 players above the NFL roster limit of 53. In order to get to that number, the team of head coach Mike Vrabel ended up cutting 21 players while sending two more to injured reserve.
For a full rundown of the moves, please take a look at our Patriots roster cuts tracker. In order to find out what they mean for the team from a big-picture perspective, just keep on reading.
In 2022, the Patriots made one of the more surprising draft picks of the Bill Belichick era when they used the 29th overall pick in the first round on Cole Strange. The Chattanooga guard was considered a talented player, whose best traits included elite athleticism and impressive versatility. Nonetheless, he was widely seen as a possible third-round pick rather than a first-rounder.
The Patriots, who had to replace recently-departed Shaq Mason and Ted Karras, did not care; they saw something in Strange and decided to bring him into their new-look offense. Three years later, he is gone.
Strange was a polarizing player in New England from the day his name was called. And yes, ultimately he failed to live up to his draft status and his exit puts a disappointing bow on what was ultimately an underwhelming tenure. However, the circumstances also did him few favors — especially from his sophomore campaign on.
After starting all 17 games at left guard his rookie season and playing 94 percent of snaps along an offensive line coached by Matt Patricia, Strange was hampered by injuries in Year 2. Still, when actually healthy he began showing signs of a second-year leap and why New England invested a premium draft pick in him. However, his healthy eventually was his undoing: a major knee injury suffered in December 2023 that included a torn patellar tendon put a halt to his development.
Strange did manage to return to the field a year after going down, but he never reached the levels of play he so briefly showed in his second season. As a consequence, he has now been let go. An unceremonious end.
Strange’s status as a former first-round pick did not save him from getting cut on Tuesday, and he is not the only player learning a similar lesson: draft status only gets you so far. Ask Brady Swinson, a fifth-round pick by the Patriots just earlier this year.
Swinson arrived in New England as a high-upside pass rushing prospect, and showed flashes of his talent throughout training camp. However, he never emerged past reserve status — in large part because of an undrafted free agent blocking his path: Elijah Ponder proved himself the more consistent player over the course of the summer, and a factor in the kicking game as well. As a result, the latter was kept over the former despite their difference in draft pedigree.
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