FOXBOROUGH — Guessing there's a sizeable contingent of Patriots fans who were not all that thrilled the Patriots went with chalk and selected LSU's Will Campbell with the fourth overall pick.
Well, Mike Vrabel and the Patriots were right to do it. The rest of the first round told us that much.
Raise your hand if you were infuriated by the offensive line over the past couple of seasons.
I see everyone is raising their hands. Good job.
If you didn't use the fourth overall selection on a tackle, how were you going to do that? Trade back up into the first round? I see a lot of hands. Wait until the 38th pick? I see a few hands.
Don't mind the sentiment one bit. When your team picks fourth overall, you want some instant impact, pizzazz, all that stuff. Understandable.
It's also fantasyland. It's not reality.
How did the Patriots get into this totally predictable mess? Bill Belichick kept passing on tackles, even a fourth-rounder like Dawand Jones in the 2023 draft. And then Eliot Wolf either got too snobby about value and didn't want to pay the freight, or was boxed out completely on not one but two tackle runs last year because, oh, 2/3rds of the league is looking for tackle play.
And those of you who said trade up or 38 ... you were just going to repeat a losing history? That was your plan? Thank goodness Vrabel and Co. decided to end all the foolish and just picked a damn good offensive lineman in Campbell.
And then guess what happened after that, the top 10 tackle run:
• Armand Membou went 7th to the Jets
• Kelvin Banks went 9th to the Saints
Clearly those three were far and away the best tackles in this class, because it took another 20 picks before another was selected. Membou is going to play right tackle for the Jets (taking over for new Patriots Morgan Moses), who took Olu Fashanu the previous year (look at that, booked end tackle investments). Like I've said previously, if you needed a right tackle in this draft, Membou was your guy in the first round.
Banks has a decent chance to play left tackle in this league, although I see him as more of a right tackle.
Then came the late-first round tackle run:
• 29. Josh Conerly, Commanders
• 32. JOSH Simmons, Chiefs
Conerly is probably a right tackle or guard in the NFL, and that's what the Commanders will do with him after they traded for Laremy Tunsil. Simmons was a big injury and character risk that a perennial contender like the Chiefs (similar to the Dynasty I Patriots) can take on. A Patriots team that has won 10 of its last 41 games could not do that, certainly not using additional assets needed on this rebuilding team.
So, basically, if you were in the "Flash At Four" camp, you'd be continuing the circle of suck you have decried every Sunday for over two years.
Vrabel ended it.
Thank goodness.
Look, I'm not going to sit here and say Campbell is the answer at left tackle for the next decade. I have a lot of doubts about that. Watch him against Arkansas' Landon Jackson — who should go early on Day 2 — for the most worrisome tape:
There's also plenty of good film. Campbell against Texas A&M's Shemar Turner (first-round pick) and Nic Scourton (will be high Round 2) is pretty good, but still a few struggles.
Vrable didn't seem concerned,
"If you drop back and you throw the ball 40 times in this league, it's tough sledding for anybody. Let me just tell you that. If it turns into a drop back passing game in the National Football League, it's going to be an issue for anybody," Vrabel said Thursday night. "When you talk about play style, how is he going to be able to create that? For offensive linemen, it's so much about a reaction of resetting your hand, chopping the arm down, all these tricks of the trade that they use. They have to be able to make great decisions and split-second decisions. His body of work is out there on the left side against a lot of really good rushers. They're all going to get beat. We can watch every time that a left tackle gets beat. They all get beat. I've been in this league for 25 years. I'm confident in how quickly he is able to process, change, and have a lot of different pitches at such a young age."
I see two scenarios where I'm more than OK with Campbell at 4th overall:
• Obviously, if he's a career left tackle and is a better-than-average starter with off-the-chart intangibles.
• If Campbell plays a solid left tackle for a couple of years, the team and Drake Maye improve each year, and then Campbell is kicked inside where he plays at a Pro Bowl level, and the Patriots acquire a standout left tackle and those two are the base of the next great Patriots line. Basically, if Campbell is a bridge LT - to somewhere - then I'm ok with it.
What I'm not OK with is if Campbell can't hack it at LT, the team moves him back to guard in Year 2 and they're in this position again (unless they double-dip with a guy like Aireontae Ersery tomorrow at 38 and he winds up being the guy). Nope, not at 4th overall. That's a misevaluation with the 4th overall pick to me, and I asked Vrabel about that.
Mike, if Will eventually has to move inside, is this a mis-evaluation, this high in the draft at fourth overall?
"I think that what we're focused on is where he's going to be tomorrow and the next day and not what the misevaluation is," Vrabel said. "We coveted this player. This was a very good football player. I think part of the draft is adding great pieces and great players to your roster, which is what we did. He hasn't even shown up here in Foxboro, and we're not going to talk about where he's going to play or what he's going to do. I'm going to let everything really speak for itself, and let his play, what he does in the community and most importantly on the field, before we start talking about that. I just think that's not fair. I've never thought about that one time. We've watched every game that he's played, put a lot of work into this, and we're all excited and happy that he's here."
I did find it interesting he said, "we're not going to talk about where he's going to play or what he's going to do." Giardi just asked him earlier if he was going to play left tackle and he said:
"He's a left tackle. That's what he's played, that's what he's done. He'll come in here and he'll compete to be the left tackle just like everybody else is going to compete for their spots. That's what we're trying to create here, somewhere that there's competition at every position and that our players believe that the best players are going to play."
Like I said, the Patriots were desperate for at least one, if not two offensive tackles in this draft. And it was not a good draft for tackles. They all had their issues. That's just the way the ball bounced this year. But they had to do something.
Campbell, given his absurdly high floor and football character, was clearly the top guy in this draft in my opinion, and just about every NFL executive I've talked to.
"Adding Will to our football team is about a foundational piece, a young 21-year-old that's mature beyond his years," Vrabel said. "He's a leader. He's durable. He's physical, dependable, accountable. He's a quick study. We spent a lot of time with him. Whatever mistakes that showed up, which they all do, he recovers quickly and can fix those mistakes. We spent a lot of time, and we looked at a lot of other players and worked a lot of other players out. He made a huge impact on us, and we're excited about adding him and look forward to seeing him and his family here tomorrow.
"This was a very, very easy pick for us."
Vrabel didn't cause this for the Patriots, but he had to clean it up. And he did about the best he could given the lay of the NFL landscape. Patriots fans better just hope he's right.