As with any draft class, no one knows anything. A sixth-round pick could develop into the greatest of all time. A first-round pick could flop and be out of the league in three years.
I like the way the Patriots handle their draft picks. No expectations. Get in the door. Work your butt off. Be a professional. Produce on the field, and you get what you earn. Don't care where you come from, or what you've done. The only thing that matters is how you do once you step through the doors.
No one knows what any of the five players drafted by the Patriots on Friday night will become. All we can do is look at the current fit on the roster, the competition, Bill Belichick's history with the position and make some guesses written in pencil. The players will write their chapters in ink down the line.
What I see, overall, with this initial group are role players to start for most of them. Certainly the tight ends, Devin Asiasi and Dalton Keene, will have a chance to compete for jobs right away, considering the incumbents, Matt LaCosse and Ryan Izzo, didn't exactly light the world on fire.
Outside of that, it's tough to see much initial impact with this quintet. I mean, it's not a great sign when the director of player personnel repeatedly spotlights how some of the players can play all four downs and how rookies need to prove themselves on special teams. And I don't mean paying lip service because that's what rookies usually have to do. I mean, emphasize it. Repeatedly.
"The kicking game is a big part of it, as you know," Nick Caserio said. "We put a huge emphasis on it. Bill has always done that. ... Really the kicking game is really the player's opportunity potentially to get to the game. If you're not a starter on offense or defense, you're going to get to the game, you better be able to play on fourth down because you can. There's probably a chance you're going to be inactive. The ability to project a role I would say, we'll look and see how it goes.
"With Dugger, Uche and Jennings, I would even say with the tight ends in their particular case, if you can get a couple phases out of them, it just enhances the overall scope and value of the roster. Look, we're not shy about it. The kicking game, it's a third of the game. We spend as much time on it probably as any team in the league. We take a lot of pride and the players take a lot of pride it in, too. Matthew Slater and Nate Ebner who are true specialists, that's all they do, you need to supplement that with other players. (Chase) Winovich, that was his role here a little bit early in the year, then he found his role a little bit because we knew he was going to be in the game on fourth down. Sometimes it's the inverse of what you think it's going to be. They're going to get that opportunity. That might be their way to get to the game and actually have a role whether it's offensively or defensively."
There was more, too. That's a lot of time spent talking special teams after a team's first selections in a draft.
Caserio used Rob Ninkovich and Jonathan Jones as examples. That's great and all, and those players are great stories and very good Patriots players. But Ninkovich was taken off the scrap heap from the Saints, and Jones was an undrafted player. Winovich was a third-round pick and played just 29 percent of defensive snaps. He was a role player. These are the first five picks in the 2020 draft for the Patriots, taken in rounds two and three, and they're slated to be ... role players.
Kyle Dugger
Josh Uche