Steve’s Draft Board: Defensive Players The Patriots Could Draft

By: Steve Atkinson

The 2022 NFL Draft is next week and for the past month, I’ve been giving my predictions on who the Patriots will draft on my podcast called All Eyes on The Pats. The podcast can be found on Spreaker I started with defense last month and now I’m doing offense this month. In this article I’m going to list the players the Patriots could draft on defense, and next week I’ll do the offensive side. The Patriots had a better draft last season after a few years where they lacked drafting talent. N’Keal Harry, Cyrus Jones, and Isaiah Wynn were all bad picks in recent years. Last year they had a better draft with the pick of Mac Jones, Rhamondre Stevenson Stevenson, and Christian Barmore. Below is my list of players the Patriots could draft this year on the defensive side of the ball.

Linebacker:

Christian Harris (Alabama)

Christopher Allen (Alabama)

Damone Clark (LSU

Cornerbacks:

Kairr Elam (Florida)

Christian Braswell (Rutgers)

Roger McCreary (Auburn)

Safety:

Draxton Hill (Michigan)

Brad Hawkins (Michigan)

Smoke Monday (Auburn)

Defensive Ends:

Aidan Hutchinson (Michigan)

David Ojabo (Michigan)

Travon Walker (Georgia)

Matt Groh Speaks To The Media For The First Time

New Director of Player Personnel Matt Groh spoke about getting faster on defense at a press conference this past Friday.

“Yeah, without a doubt we’re looking to get faster everywhere. It’s not just defense, it’s offense, it’s special teams. It’s not just linebacker. I think there’s multiple ways to do that. I think we did some of that last year, have worked on doing that here in free agency. I know the question’s been asked about these different linebackers. There’s going to be different players all across the league who are considered linebackers whether they’re converting from a different position in college, safety to linebacker, whatnot and that’s certainly one way to get speed on the field, is just using some of these guys differently, just the caliber of athlete that you can get, the size, the speed. These days, you can put these guys all over the place and that’s certainly one way to increase the overall speed of the defense.”

Groh also spoke about the linebacker position and how it has changed over the years.

“Yeah, sure. It’s a different game than it was 20, 30, 40 years ago and that player has also changed. There’s not as many of those big linebackers, they just, they don’t exist. Colleges want them smaller because they’ve got to be able to adapt to the college game. So, you can’t just create these guys out of thin air and so it’s with all the positions, it’s what the college game provides us. We have to just take what they are going to give us from year to year. One year there might be a couple, high level sam linebackers and other years there might not be any. So, if you’re looking to try and play with that kind of player, you’ve got to figure out a way to get that player. Either you’re going to take them higher on the draft than maybe some other teams would, or you’ve got to go out in free agency and find that guy. So, it’s really just as simple as there are not a lot of those guys in college anymore, so you’re not going to see a lot of those guys in the NFL anymore.”

As we wrap up the defensive side the Patriots main focus is to get faster and younger next week. They need to hit on this draft like they did last year to be successful for many years to come.