FOXBOROUGH, Mass. -- A wrap-up of the New England Patriots' draft:
Best move: Keeping it simple in the first round, holding on to the No. 32 pick despite considering a trade option and picking defensive tackle Malcom Brown. ESPN draft analyst Mel Kiper had Brown rated No. 12 on his Big Board, as players with Brown's combination of size (6-foot-2 3/8, 319 pounds), athleticism and versatility usually don't last to No. 32. With the Patriots losing longtime defensive tackle Vince Wilfork in free agency, it ended up being the perfect marriage between need and value.
Riskiest move: Selecting long-snapper Joe Cardona in the fifth round (166th overall) makes plenty of sense, as noted before the draft, but the risk is that Cardona might not be available to the team if he has to fulfill a military commitment. If that's the way it unfolds, then the team is back in the same place it was before, with a need to fill a spot that is easy to overlook until there is a mistake in a game.
Most surprising move: Picking Stanford safety Jordan Richards in the second round raised some eyebrows in some NFL scouting circles, in part because Richards was viewed by those clubs as a late-round consideration. Also, the Patriots appear to be pretty well stocked at safety and had more immediate needs at positions such as cornerback (not addressed until the seventh round) and guard (addressed twice in the fourth round). Richards sounds like a Matthew Slater-type player from an overall character and football intelligence perspective, and Bill Belichick seemed excited about bringing him into the team's culture. But one question was if Belichick could have done so later in the draft and filled in earlier with a player at a different position with a higher level of need (e.g. cornerback).
File it away: The Patriots made 11 selections in this year's draft, and they're set up to have a similar number of selections next year as well with picks in every round, an additional seventh-rounder from Houston for quarterback Ryan Mallett, and multiple compensatory draft picks expected (one projection has them getting a third-rounder and two sixth-rounders). So the team will once again have a boatload of picks to continue to feed the pipeline for young talent.
My take: Outside of a high-end cornerback -- and I'm not sure there were really any there for the taking -- this looks like a strong draft for the Patriots. I went in with the thought that if they could address the heart of the line of scrimmage on both sides of the ball, and come away with the draft's top-rated long-snapper, it would address some primary areas of need. I felt like the tone of the draft was set in the first round with the selection of Brown and then the back-to-back picks of guards Tre Jackson and Shaq Mason, two powerful players who have nasty intentions. Thumbs up
