With Ireland/Loomis/Payton doing such an awesome job last couple years, will the covid19

there was a comment that they could be a bit more conservative than usual cause they can't fully evaluate some guys with questions (character or injury histories) as much as they normally would.

Correct


Patriots will get 1st round talent in mid rounds lock

First off, the biggest thing they’ve changed is going with value. There have been so many value picks that didn’t necessarily fit need that ended up taking over just based on talent (like Anzalone, Ram, CGJ, Kamara) I think it’s obvious the exact traits they’ve picked out year after year in each draft as well.

More so than skill: they seem to value competitiveness, Football IQ, and work ethic/character way more than any physical traits or potential outside of the Davenport pick but even then Davenport showed growth, work ethic and a competitive streak that made him attractive to us. Think about it, almost every single one of the guys we’ve drafted, outside of maybe Lattimore, works their asses off in the off-season, sometimes even more so than players on other teams and they get after each other in practice. Payton used to bitch about practice all the time and now we hardly hear about it. Guys like MT13, CGJ, etc. thrive off that competition, an inner drive to succeed. And outside of CGJ, almost all of the guys we bring in are high character guys. That seems to be a big one

You could argue the football IQ and character are both things they value and outside of CGJ and Lattimore, most of the picks we’ve had are guys that were high in football IQ and real IQ. Kamara, Ram, Davenport, MT13, formerly Bell, McCoy, Hendrickson, Rankins, Anzalone. Even the guys they bring in from free agency mimic these qualities: Cook, Murray, formerly Okafor, Malcolm Brown, Malcolm Jenkins, Davis, Emmanuel Sanders. They’ve developed what they think is the right formula when it comes to talent and while their skill plays a part, it’s hardly what they’re basing their decisions off of anymore

We may not take chances on small school division II players like Terron Armstead of Arkansas Pine-Bluff and David Onyemata and Marques Colsoton and Jahri Evans.

We hit the lottery on those guys a lot. But since we probably haven’t been working them out up close as much we may not feel as confident in picking them. Or maybe we drag our nuts on the league like 2017 again. Who knows.