Well, we at least know the Patriots' new director of player personnel pierces the Foxborough bubble once in a while to see and hear what people are saying about Team Ignore The Noise.
It took Matt Groh about .5 seconds into his press conference early Saturday morning, after the second and third rounds of the NFL Draft concluded, to make that clear.
To anyone who thought Groh, Bill Belichick and the Patriots were out of depth taking small-school guard/center Cole Strange in the first round on Thursday night — we're looking at you, yucksters Sean McVay and Les Snead and many, many others — Groh made his belief in that pick crystal clear.
"Yeah, I think that's really easy for people to say," Groh said in response to a question about overdrafting and perhaps being able to wait until later in the draft to pick Strange. "Nobody knows what the teams are going to do behind you. When you come back up you don't want to miss out on a player. ... It's not all so cut and dry with where you think a guy is going to go, and you've got to look at what the rest of the board is telling you. If you value a player high enough, then you want that player to be a part of your team.
"That's certainly how we feel about Cole. We're really excited to have Cole aboard. You want to talk about value, the guy started at three positions on the offensive line. I think it's kind of easy to pigeonhole him as a guard. He does a lot. This guy is really tough. He's really smart. He's almost 6'5", 300 pounds, and runs sub-5 seconds in the 40. There's not a lot of humans out there that are doing that, benched 225, 31 times. This is a really big, strong, tough, athletic guy. If you value toughness, which we do, you value guys like Cole Strange."
The words don't even do Groh's emotion justice. The last paragraph was given with passion, and was punctuated several times.
Good for him. Groh, even if he's a stormtrooper in the homogenous Evil Empire, should show some emotion and conviction. He's been waiting and grinding for years to be in this spot. It probably wasn't fun for him to see the reaction to his first pick succeeding the likes of Dave Ziegler (making moves and taking names in Vegas), Nick Caserio (who had a fabulous two days for the Texans) and Scott Pioli. Most of the rest of the NFL world might have literally been laughing at the Patriots leaping to take Strange — the next guard didn't go off the board for nearly an entire round (Luke Godeke went 28 picks later to the Bucs 57th overall) — but Groh rightfully stood behind that pick with conviction. It was clear this was not a Belichick special — or, at the very least, Groh sees things the same as his septuagenarian leader.
If you're going to be a bear, be a grizzly. And Groh showed some teeth on Saturday morning, including when he discussed second-round receiver Tyquan Thornton from Baylor (long, lean and fast at 4.28 seconds in the 40) and 5-foot-8 defensive back Marcus Jones out of Houston, who is also a dynamic kick returner.
"Just like if you want to get tougher, you'd better get tough guys," Groh said forcefully. "You want to get faster, you'd better get fast guys. I don't know how many guys out there are faster than Tyquan. So, we're really excited to be able to add him and his explosive playmaking. He is fast. To be able to get some toughness and some athleticism on the first night, and I think these other two guys, Tyquan and Marcus Jones, they're certainly tough guys, too, but at their positions, at the skill positions, they are fast."
Ok then.
I don't have any idea what kinds of players Strange, Thornton and Jones will be — although I would quibble with value on the first two, and would have been thrilled if the Patriots took Jones sometime in the second round; the kid can ball in multiple phases of the game — and neither do you. Neither does the rest of the NFL, even if my polling of 10 NFL execs put the reach factor at about 95 percent for Strange and 75 percent on the raw, skinny and inconsistent catching Thornton.
But it's clear the Patriots are enacting some sort of plan that they feel strongly about.
What were the two biggest — and completely valid (even if many didn't want to hear it at the time) — criticisms of the Patriots last season, especially as their season imploded toward the end (for the third straight season)?
That the Patriots were slow, and they got pushed around a bit, if they weren't outright soft.
Well, as Groh pointed out, all three draft picks can fly for their positions. Mock if you will the thought of a guard hauling ass down the field, but it does help, especially if the Patriots are going to play in space a bit more on different types of screens and end-around runs. Thornton is the fastest receiver in this class, even if that doesn't always mean a whole lot around here (cough, Bethel Johnson, Chad Jackson). We'll have to see how that and he translate to the pro game.
Jones could be an elite slot corner eventually, and can help defend some of the faster weapons the Patriots face until then, but he'll make an immediate impact on kick returns.
Also factor in that the Patriots traded for undersized but speedy LB Mack Wilson, have undersized and speedy LBs Cam McGrone and Raekwon McMillan, back after redshirt seasons, and you can at least say the Patriots have tried to do something about it. You and I may have gone further, like many other AFC competitors have done, but the Patriots have at least inched along in the right direction.
And it was just one pick, with several more to come today that will likely help in this area, but Strange is at least a prick (in the nicest way possible) and tough on the field.
"I would say my playing style is aggressive and relentless," he told reporters, matter of factly.
So, yes, maybe the Patriots could have done things differently. They could have taken CB Kaiir Elam, a potential true No. 1 cornerback, at 21 instead of now facing him twice a year with the Bills (and passed on Jones with Jon Jones and Myles Bryant already on the roster), who traded up to get him at 23. The Patriots could have waited to take Strange at their original spot of 54, or moved up a little to make sure they got him. They could have taken Thornton at their original spot in the third round, or maneuvered a little. The Patriots could have not dealt their fifth-round picks and used them to trade up for Jones or someone else in the third (they did it twice two years ago for two players, Devin Asiasi and Dalton Keene, who have given them zilch — so we're not exactly talking about the most valuable of assets).
It doesn't really matter because what's done is done. The first three rounds are over, the Patriots made their choices, and now the slate is wiped clean and the scoreboard commences against all the other players the Patriots could have had. You can quibble, I can quibble, but it's all just smoke-filled, coffee house crap.
The Patriots, clearly illustrated by Groh, had a plan to get better through this draft, and they think they knocked it out of the park with the kinds of players they had conviction on.
The rest of the NFL world may be snickering, but the Patriots deserve to state their case on the field. And then we'll all know the score.
"We've been putting in a lot of hours as a large group, dwindling that down to a smaller (front office) group," Groh said. "It's been great to have players where we're on a consensus opinion.
"All these guys are going to have to come in here and work, and it's a big transition for anybody coming into a new program, coming into our program, whether that's a free agent, but especially here these rookies as they're becoming professionals. So, we're really excited to have these three guys, and they're going to have to get to work. Now it's up to them. We're going to give them the resources and the coaching and the tutelage and everything we can do to put them in position, but it's really going to be up to them to kind of make or break their careers."
And the Patriots.