The Patriots signed third-round offensive tackle Caedan Wallace to his four-year rookie contract, the team announced Friday.
He is the sixth of eight draft picks to sign, leaving only second-rounder Ja’Lynn Polk and fourth-rounder Layden Robinson unsigned.
The Patriots used the 68th overall pick on Wallace.
They hope he can earn the starting left tackle job after playing almost exclusively at right tackle at Penn State. Incumbent right tackle Mike Onwenwu will stay on that side.
Wallace, 24, played all but six of his college snaps at right tackle.
He earned honorable mention All-Big Ten Conference honors while starting all 13 games at right tackle in 2023. He also earned the school’s Lion’s Pride Outstanding Senior Player Award last year.
The Patriots surprised few by taking quarterback Drake Maye with the third overall pick in the 2024 draft. They surprised one person in particular by taking another quarterback in round six.
Joe Milton III, the player the Pats took, didn’t expect it.
Mike Reiss of ESPN.com takes a closer look at why the Patriots drafted a pair of quarterbacks, with the no-brainer Maye followed later by the rocket-armed Milton at pick No. 193.
“You want to have a strong room,” coach Jerod Mayo said, via Reiss. “I would say the way it looks now, we have a very strong room.”
They also have veteran Jacoby Brissett and Bailey Zappe. It’s hard to imagine all four being on the Week 1 active roster.
The bigger question is who will start? Although most of the first-round rookies are likely to be playing right away, Maye could take a back seat to Brissett — especially since there’s a belief that Maye is raw.
The reality is that, once the rookie starts playing, it’s very hard to go back. That said, there’s value in giving a young quarterback reps, even if it’s a baptism by fire. The sooner he plays, the sooner the game slows down, the sooner he reaches his ceiling.
Bill Belichick parted ways with the Patriots this offseason, and his son, Steve, followed him out the door. Steve Belichick landed the defensive coordinator job at the University of Washington.
Brian Belichick, though, chose to stay.
On staff since 2017, Brian Belichick will serve as safeties coach for a fifth season.
“I was thankful and happy to get the opportunity to coach here and was thankful and happy to take advantage of it and take [head coach Jerod Mayo] up on it,” Brian Belichick said Wednesday, via Mark Daniels of masslive.com. “I have a lot of gratitude in my life right now with my [newborn] daughter, my job, being here, living in this area. I love it. I just hope I can contribute to help us be the best team we can this year.”
Belichick grew up in the organization, joining the Patriots as a coaching assistant a year after graduating from Trinity College. So, this marks the first season his boss isn’t his father and his father isn’t his boss.
“This is getting a little personal about our family dynamics, but in a way, I think it was good for us to have some separation from being in a football building every day, seeing each other,” Belichick said. “Whereas now, we’re not just connected by football. Not that it was that way before, but we talk about other things because we’re in different places and not in the same place every day. There’s a lot to talk about football-wise, so it was hard not to get caught up with that when you saw each other at work every day.”
The Patriots have brought in three new quarterbacks since the end of last season, including third overall pick Drake Maye, and that kind of commitment to adding new blood at the position wouldn’t seem to bode well for the lone holdover from 2023.
Bailey Zappe wasn’t lamenting his situation when he met with reporters on Wednesday, though. While most people expect Maye and free agent acquisition Jacoby Brissett to be the options as the starter this year, Zappe said he’s been enjoying the offseason and feels that he is getting a chance to compete for playing time as well.
“I’ve been having fun, y’all,” Zappe said, via CBS Boston. “They bring in guys every year obviously. They want everybody to compete and that’s what they’ve been telling us this entire time. Everyone is going to get an opportunity to compete.”
The Patriots also drafted Joe Milton this year, so Zappe’s best hope for being on a 53-man roster come September may be for an injury to create an opportunity somewhere other than New England.
Patriots General Manager Eliot Wolf said this week that the team is going to take “a collaborative approach” to deciding when first-round pick Drake Maye is ready to take over as the team’s starting quarterback and head coach Jerod Mayo’s opinion will be central to that process.
Mayo got a chance to provide an update on Maye’s status during a press conference on Wednesday. Mayo said that Maye “is taking advantage of the opportunities that he gets” and said that he does not feel that there’s any concern about Maye not getting enough opportunities at this point in the calendar.
“No. My message is, it’s not how many opportunities, it’s what you do with the opportunities that you get,” Mayo said, via a transcript from the team. “Look, going back to the competition part of it, the better you do on a day-after-day basis, not just on the field but also in the classroom, the more reps you’ll get going forward.”
Mayo said that the rookie is also taking reps off the field via virtual reality technology. Mayo said “the virtual stuff is great and that’s another way that you can steal some of those reps without being on the football field,” but the on-field work will likely wind up being the biggest factor that the Patriots use while deciding when to elevate Maye.
Patriots quarterback Drake Maye signed his rookie contract on Tuesday, officially making him a member of the club.
But Maye’s ascension to New England’s QB1 still could take some time.
With veteran quarterback Jacoby Brissett on the roster, Maye will have however long he needs to get ready to start. The Patriots have not set a public timeline for that to happen. But New England executive vice president of player personnel Eliot Wolf noted on Tuesday’s edition of Up and Adams that it won’t be one person making the decision.
“I think those will be some important conversations for us to have,” Wolf said. “Right now, it’s Jacoby Brissett. He’s taking the first reps, and we’re excited about what he’s shown not only off the field but on the field with his throwing ability.
“Drake Maye — let’s be honest, we’ve had him for three weeks now. There’s a long way to go for all of our rookies and all of our players as we adapt to this new scheme that coach [offensive coordinator Alex] Van Pelt is implementing offensively.”
Wolf added that the team will “have those conversations as they arise.”
“I’m sure it’s gonna be a collaborative approach as it’s been so far with really all the big decisions that we’ve made. All four of the quarterbacks that we have on the roster right now are working hard and ready to go.”
In addition to Brissett and Maye, the team has sixth-round rookie Joe Milton and Bailey Zappe on the roster at quarterback.
The No. 3 pick of this year’s draft is under contract.
Per Mike Garafolo of NFL Media, quarterback Drake Maye has agreed to terms with the Patriots on his rookie deal.
New England will choose whether or not to exercise the fifth-year option on Maye’s contract in the spring of 2027.
Maye threw for 8,018 yards with 63 touchdowns and 16 interceptions in his collegiate career at North Carolina. Veteran Jacoby Brissett may begin the 2024 season as New England’s starter, but Maye should ascend to QB1 sooner than later.
The Patriots have now agreed to terms with five of their eight 2024 draftees.
After spending his first three seasons with the Patriots, quarterback Mac Jones was traded to the Jaguars in March.
The No. 15 overall pick of the 2021 draft, Jones was sent to Jacksonville in exchange for a sixth-round pick.
Now that he’s well-positioned to be Trevor Lawrence’s backup in 2024, Jones has made a positive impression on head coach Doug Pederson.
“He’s the ultimate pro,” Pederson said in his Tuesday press conference. “He’s done a great job since he’s been here, spending time studying the offense, getting caught up in the offense. ... I liked him coming out of college when looking at quarterbacks back then. We’re excited to have him. It gives us a great room with he and C.J. [Beathard] as kind of competing in that role. And he’s done a nice job.
“He throws a really nice ball. He’s smart. He’s eccentric — he can be a little quirky at times. You see him out there on the field doing some different things. But that’s the joy and the fun, I think, that he wanted to get back to a little bit. He’s done a great job for us.”
Jones grew up in Jacksonville before heading to Alabama or his college ball. Pederson said that comfort level in the environment could help Jones develop as a player.
“I think a change of scenery sometimes is good for players, for coaches,” Pederson said. “For him to get back here around family and friends has been good for him. I think he’s embraced it since he’s been here.”
Jones completed 65 percent of his passes for 2,120 yards with 10 touchdowns and 12 interceptions in 11 games last season. He compiled an 18-24 record in three seasons with New England, completing 66 percent of his throws for 8,918 yards with 46 TDs and 36 picks.
When the first (erroneous) reports emerged regarding #Deflategate, my wife and I had a conversation about it, which went something like this.
Wife: “What’s the issue?”
Me: “They say someone took air out of footballs.”
Wife: “Why would they do that?”
Me: “To make it easier to grip.”
Wife: “What’s the benefit of it?”
Me: “Makes it easier to throw.”
Wife: “Shouldn’t the NFL want that?”
Nine years later, that simple, first-impression logic remains undeniable. The rule requiring footballs to be inflated between 12.5 and 13.5 psi was the ultimate “it was like that when I got here” rule. No one knew where it came from, why it was, or how the numbers were picked.
Former Eagles center Jason Kelce recently pointed out the stupidity of the rule and the enforcement of it against the Patriots and Tom Brady, in an episode of the New Heights podcast.
“I don’t even think Tom should have got in trouble for deflating footballs,” Jason Kelce said, via Lauren Campbell of MassLive.com. “I’m pro-deflating footballs. I’ll say it. I’ll say it. I am pro-deflating footballs. . . . He outsmarted people. Why the fuck does it matter how much air is in that mutherfucker? If you’re throwing it and catching it, who the fuck cares?
“We’re all mad because he had the common sense to fucking take a little air out so the receivers could catch the fucking thing? Why is that against the rules? You all could have taken the air out, too. You guys could have taken the air out, too. You just weren’t smart enough. So why am I getting penalized because you’re fucking dummies? It’s a rule, but it’s a stupid rule, though.”
Amen to all of that. It is a stupid rule, and it was an even stupider investigation. Bungled from the outset, with the conclusion predetermined and the challenge becoming working backward to prove it. The thinking was that some in the league thought the Patriots didn’t get punished enough for the original Spygate controversy, and that this was a way to supplement their sanctions.
It didn’t help that Brady destroyed his phone. It didn’t help that it seemed there was indeed a deliberate plan in place to secretly “take the top off” the balls. But it also didn’t help the league that the numbers were sloppily harvested and not inconsistent with atmospheric conditions, making the proper outcome inconclusive at best for cheating.
The best evidence of that came from the 2015 epilogue. As explained in Playmakers (the hardcover is currently $13.52), the league began conducting random checks of air pressure at halftime of games. The numbers were kept under lock and key. And they were soon expunged, apparently because they showed that the numbers from the 2014 AFC Championship did not suggest cheating with the clarity the NFL believed.
Regardless of whether the investigation was handled poorly with a destination already determined, the rule itself was and is stupid. If the offense wants the ball to be lower than 12.5, so be it. Higher, so be it. As a time when the NFL is concerned about supercharging offenses, any under- or overinflation that achieves that end should be embraced, not rejected.
It’s unclear how much Patriots edge rusher Matthew Judon has been around the team during the voluntary offseason program. He missed the organized team activity that was open to the media last week, and coach Jerod Mayo said Judon has been “in and out” of the team facility.
It’s also unclear whether Judon’s absence is contract related.
He signed a four-year, $56 million deal in 2021 and is scheduled to earn a base salary of $6.5 million in the final year of his contract. Judon did limited work at training camp last summer before the Patriots gave him a $12 million bump in guaranteed money.
He had a chance to make $18 million more in incentives but tore his biceps in Week 4 last season.
On Sunday, organizers of Judon’s youth football camp requested no contract questions to the four-time Pro Bowler, giving the impression his absence at the team’s offseason program is contract related.
Judon, though, did make one thing clear: He will attend the Patriots’ mandatory minicamp to avoid $101,000 in fines.
“Hell, yeah,” Judon told Karen Guregian of MassLive, “I ain’t giving no money away.”
Judon is back to full health and ready for his ninth season.