The Patriots Aren’t Trading The Number Three Pick In The NFL Draft

By Steve Atkinson

We are just days away from the NFL Draft and I’m looking forward to having all the drama and rumors be over with. The speculation on who and what the Patriots will do with the number three pick will finally come ahead on Thursday. The Patriots will not trade down on Thursday night. Ownership wants a quarterback, Mayo wants a quarterback, and Eliot Wolf wants a quarterback.

The Patriots aren’t trading the pick. When will they ever be in this spot again? If they are in the spot again I can tell you Jerod Mayo and Eliot Wolf won’t be here. If it’s the Packer Way in Foxborough. The Packers draft and develop and look where Jordan Love is. Love was behind Aaron Rodgers and they put the coaching and players around him and they’ve seen the progress. The voices were heard in Green Bay and now the voices will be heard from the scouts in New England.

The Patriots Have A Big Decision To Make Thursday Night 

Eliot Wolf spoke the other day and had this to say about trading down.

Yeah, so ongoing. We’re open to anything. Moving up, moving down. We’re open for business in the first round, and in every round. We have some holes we feel like we need to fill in the draft. We’re drafting to develop the team. The more picks we have the better. But if there’s an opportunity to move up and strike, if the board kind of recommends it, then we won’t be afraid to pull the trigger on that either.

What’s Eliot Wolf going to say? Are we going to say at number three and not trade down? I think they are keeping their options open but ultimately they won’t trade down and take a quarterback with the number three pick on Thursday night.

Wolf was also asked about being the final decision maker and he had an interesting answer.

 No. But again, if I’m the only person who wants a player, and everybody else in the building doesn’t want that player then I’m not crazy. We’re going to try to do what’s right.

In other words not like in years past when Bill Belichick would listen to people like Michael Lombardi, and his friends around the college ranks over his scouts in the building. Scouts do a lot of work throughout the year traveling and scouting. What’s the point if the head coach and GM are just going to ignore what they have to say and just draft a player his friends say is good?

That’s why this draft is so important to let the voices be heard of people in the building that weren’t in the past. Now, the Patriots fans can call it whatever they want but it’s the truth. Here is Wolf when asked about who will be included in picking the third spot.

I mean, again, picking so early, we can kind of work through the scenarios, not while the draft is going on. We’ve already had a lot of those conversations. As far as who will be involved, there’s a smaller group of people that we’ll talk to, both on the scouting side and the coaching side, and we’ll get together, Jerod and I, and kind of work through that along with Matt Groh, whichever coordinator on whichever side of the ball and that’ll happen in every pick. That’s not just the first pick.