FOXBOROUGH - Consider this an advance of my final positional draft preview. I wasn’t going to go there just yet, but when Eliot Wolf spoke with us on Monday afternoon, the last question of the press conference was about his current collection of edge players.
To preface, with K’Lavon Chaisson’s departure, the Pats no longer have that speedy, bendy type. Chaisson didn’t star in ‘The Matrix,’ but of last year’s group, he was best at contorting his body at the top of his rush. He could put himself in a physics-defying position to impact the quarterback.
Thus, the query highlighted that missing element and wondered if, “you need that smaller, faster guy that might be better on third down, or better to have the bigger body?”
“Oh, I never want a smaller guy,” Wolf joked. “No, faster guy. I said I never want a smaller guy. Yeah, we could complement our room with some speed. I think that's evident. Dre’Mont, Harold [Landry III], Elijah [Ponder], and some of the other guys we have, they all have their skill sets. We would like to get faster. Dre’Mont’s a guy that can play across the line, run games. I mean, he can sneaky beat you with speed, but that's probably not his bread and butter. So, that's an area that we're looking to try to improve the depth on the roster.”
So I, having spent too many hours watching tape and talking to the professionals who get paid to watch the tape, immediately started going through my mental rolodex (there’s that word again) of who could fit, especially where the Patriots are drafting (31, 63, and 95 in the first three rounds).
The first name that comes to mind is