Sunday Patriots Notes: 6 thoughts on New England’s 2025 NFL Draft

The 2025 NFL Draft is done and dusted, and the New England Patriots have 11 new players to show for it. Between the selection of offensive tackle Will Campbell in Round 1 and the final pick of the draft, Mr. Irrelevant Kobee Minor, New England was quite active filling the needs on its roster and strengthening its foundation for the future.

With the draft clearly the top priority over the last few days, today’s version of our Sunday Patriots Notes is going to look a bit different. Instead of doing the weekly clean-up, here are six thoughts on the event and New England’s role within it in particular.

6 thoughts on the Patriots’ 2025 draft

1. Will Campbell’s interview with Jamie Erdahl of NFL Network immediately after he was picked fourth overall was one of the moments of the entire draft. Not so much for the information that he presented, but rather due to the raw and unfiltered emotion behind it. This was as real as the draft gets, and it shows just how much prospects such as the 21-year-old invest in it.

It is understandable, too. While not every player’s path to Green Bay, or wherever else they were when they got the call, looks the same, Campbell’s journey is one traveled by countless others before him.

Showing interest in the game from an early age, he was a four-year starter at Neville High School in his hometown of Monroe, LA. As a 14-year-old freshman he was already playing on the Tigers’ varsity team and became one of the top recruits in all of Louisiana. What followed was a three-year career at LSU and eventual trip to the pros.

Along the way, Campbell played dozens of games and went through hundreds of workouts and practice sessions. He had to take care of his body and also possess the mental maturity to handle his increasing fame and the pressure that comes with it. The personal toll the build-up to an NFL career takes oftentimes get overshadowed by the athletic accomplishments, but it should not be forgotten either.

Campbell’s interview on Thursday night made this clear.

2. As for the Patriots picking Campbell at No. 4, there is not much to say that has not already been said. We now what he can do as a player and the role he is going to play in New England. We also have heard the questions surrounding his selection, and been part of the legitimate-yet-overblown-to-a-degree debate about his arm length and wingspan.

Until Campbell will take the field to compete against NFL talent for the first time in his career, all that gets added to the narrative surrounding him would be speculation and projection. From this perspective, there is limited value in further adding to that relative to what has already been said in this place or elsewhere.

So, let’s end with one quick thought on the pick: Campbell was the cleanest overall offensive line prospect entering the draft, and the Patriots selecting him with the fourth pick to address the biggest need on their roster made all the sense in the world. Whether he lives up to his draft status or not will be seen, but you cannot fault the team for taking a swing at him given all that we know about him coming out of LSU.

3. New England spending its most valuable draft capital on offense for a second straight year is no coincidence. Yes, the board falling a certain way might have contributed to that, but the fact was that the team set itself up to go offense-heavy in the draft anyway.

Even though New England had signed some veteran free agents on that side of the ball — WRs Stefon Diggs and Mack Hollins, OT Morgan Moses, C Garrett Bradbury, among others — there was definitive room for improvement left entering the draft. The Patriots apparently agreed, filling their biggest remaining holes over the first two days.

As a result, the unit as a whole looks much improved coming out of the event. Will Campbell is a Day 1 starter; TreVeyon Henderson will immediately be an RB1b next to RB1a Rhamondre Stevenson; Kyle Williams has shades of Drake Maye’s former favorite wide receiver at North Carolina, Devontez Walker; Jared Wilson will at worst compete for the starting center spot next year if not in 2025 already.

The Patriots entered the draft with one massive need to fill at left tackle, and several smaller ones also in need of addressing. That is exactly what happened.

4. Leading up to the draft, Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel spoke about the debate between drafting for need versus choosing the best players on the board.

“We’d love for them to align, having a need and having the best player be there. That doesn’t always happen, and we certainly want to pick the best player as many times as we can,” he said. “Maybe you look at one position and we may have some returning starters, or there’s depth at that position, but to add premium players when available is something that you should probably always try to do.”

For the Patriots, this year’s draft certainly felt more needs-based than anything. That being said, an NFL Draft if more complicated than fans using mock draft simulators: players are graded on a more complicated scale, and not necessarily listed 1-2-3 but rather stacked both horizontally and vertically to combine needs and grades.

It is entirely possible that the grades for Will Campbell, TreVeyon Henderson and Kyle Williams in particular were only marginally different from other prospects also available at their respective draft slots. And even if they technically were not the highest-graded players on the board, they would still fall into a cluster of best players available.

5. While on the topic of the Patriots’ process itself, there was interesting quote from EVP of player personnel Eliot Wolf during Saturday’s wrap-up media call. Wolf was asked about improvements compared to last year, and he admitted that there were issues in 2024.

“This is on me from last year,” he said. “We just didn’t have an organized enough process, and Ryan Cowden and Coach Vrabel and [John Streicher] really came in and helped me organize this. I think we’re going to have a productive group.”

This is not the first time that Wolf talked about mistakes being made last year. Back in February, he claimed that “some of the information that we got on some of the players wasn’t as thorough as it needed to be” during a press conference at the NFL Scouting Combine.

The Patriots not being on their A-game was a constant throughout last year. With Bill Belichick having departed the club and Wolf and first-team head coach Jerod Mayo taking over, a reorganization had to happen. That process turned out to be quite complicated both on the scouting and the coaching side, and led to some underwhelming and at times chaotic results.

Hiring Mike Vrabel to replace Jerod Mayo should help clean up one part of the procedure, with Cowden’s addition in particular helping with organizing player personnel. Of course, the coming weeks and months will be quite fascinating to watch from that perspective: while not a lot of actual football will happen outside of offseason workouts, May and June are typically the months for turnover in the scouting department.

Keep an eye out for changes.

6. If there is one word to sum up the Patriots’ draft, it might be “unsurprising.” Sure, there were some selections not necessarily expected to happen — see: long snapper Julian Ashby in Round 7 — but as a whole, New England seemed to follow the script: Eliot Wolf and company focused on improving the offense, and later on went for role players and developmental upside.

Not all of the picks will pan out or be difference makers for the team, but the Patriots approached this draft like a rebuilding club should. They did not take too many gambles, went with the safe picks, and, as noted above, used their premium picks to fill their needs.

They may have left some meat on the bone as far as the highest-ceiling players in the draft is concerned, with fifth-round edge Bradyn Swinson the biggest exception, but they did what had to be done: add as many quality players and culture fits as possible, and take it from there.

As colleague Pat Lane put it in his post-draft grades, it was a step in the right direction. That is particularly true when viewed in the context of the entire offseason: Mike Vrabel wants to build his team from the ground up, and the pieces added over the last three days will help him do that.