Locked On Patriots - Daily Podcast On The New England Patriots - Locked On Patriots April 8, 2019 - Mock Draft Monday

Episode Date: April 8, 2019

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Hey there everybody, welcome on into a Mock Draft Monday here at the Locked On Patriots Podcast. Mark Schofield back in the big chair for today, Monday, April 8th, 2019. Happy to be with you now on another Mock Draft Monday. And we're going to do a couple of different things today. What we're going to do is I'm going to work through another Mock Draft, trying to do some trade stuff, trying to move around the board a bit over at Fanspeak. A little bit later, I'm also going to sort of tease out what we did last week. Oh, behind the scenes at the Lockdown Podcast Network.

We did a Mock Draft amongst the scenes at the Locked On Podcast Network, we did a mock draft amongst the hosts of the various shows. And I'm going to talk about the decisions that were in front of me at 32 overall, the way the board fell, and the ultimate decision that I made with that 32nd pick. Now before we do any of that though, a reminder to follow me on Twitter at Mark Schofield. Check out the work at the places like InsideThePylon.com, Pro Football Weekly, The Score, Matt Waldman's Rookie Scouting Portfolio, a venerable trio of SB Nation websites, including Big Blue View, Bleeding Green Nation, where I co-host the QB Scope Show with the one and only Michael J. Kist, and of course, the one and only Pat's Pulpit.

Now, as I said, we are doing a mock over at Fanspeak using their premium product. And what I am doing is this. I am using Matt Miller's big board for my board. I am using the random setting for the rest of the other team's boards. I want a little bit of unpredictability here. It's one thing to sort of see how the board is falling for everybody to know, all right, I can probably get this guy there. It's a little bit different when you've got some potential unpredictable boards out there. And so that's what we're doing here. Also using it on the difficulty setting and user voted team needs. Now, I went into this hoping to trade up rather than down.

What I wanted to do in the first round was move up to get one of the tight ends and instead I was saddled with a situation where it did not work that way because the way the board fell and this is interesting because I haven't seen this a lot in simulations or in mocks. But you get Noah Fant coming off to the Packers. Everybody assumes the Packers will take a tight end. And in most mocks I've seen, if you want to make sure you get ahead of a team that's going to draft a tight end, you've got to get in front of the Packers at 30 where they have that second pick.

So you've got to trade with perhaps the Chiefs at 29. Or, as we talked about with Phil Perry's mock this week, you've got to get up to where the Seahawks are picking at 21 perhaps to go get a tight end. Now, interestingly enough, Fant comes off the board at 12 here. And then Hawkinson comes off the board at 17. So now I'm here at 32. And I could go A.J. Brown. I could go Keneal Harry. I could go perhaps,

if I want to reach a bit, Irv Smith. But I don't want to force a pick here. And I do have some potential trades in front of me. And I do make the trade. What do I do? I make a trade with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. And so what I've done is I've traded out of 32. I don't like the way the board has fallen. And so I've sent 32 to them. And I get back their pick in the second round,

which is the seventh pick in the second round. And then I get from them a pick in the fifth round. Now, maybe the value isn't quite there, but I'm very curious to see what the Patriots could do with now three second round picks, three third round picks, which they had already, and now that pick in the fifth round. We've talked about this before when we've done drafts with the trades. I think that gap from the fourth round to the sixth round is a big one,

and it worries me, and so I'd like to see them have a fifth-round pick. Now we are on the clock here, 39 overall, and we're going to address the safety position this is a pick at 39 daniel jones is still here jared stidham is still here we can address quarterback we can address a couple of different needs but i don't feel the need to force a pick and now i like the way the board has fallen jonathan abam from Mississippi State, who was there at 32, we pass on him. Now we're going to draft him here. Matt Miller's 27th player ranked on his board. We get him at 39. And now we are on the clock again with that second pick now in the second round.

This is the Patriots' original second round pick. This is the pick that comes to them at 56. And there are some trades offered to us. But I think we're going to stay here and make a pick. I think we're going to stay here and make a pick. Because looking at the board now, we can get a tight end in Dawson Knox. It hasn't had a nice pro day situation. I think he's moved up boards a little bit.

We could still double dip at the tight end position, having missed out on one of the earlier guys. And so we'll sit here and we'll take Dawson Knox, draft him at 56. So I like that as well. Now it brings us to the final pick of the second round. This is that pick at 64. Patriots can go a couple of different directions here. Now we've got a pick coming up pretty quickly early in the third round.

And so there are a couple of wide receivers. Myles Boykin, for example, I think would be a nice fit. JJ Arteaga, out white side, maybe an interesting selection as well. I want to see if I can perhaps push wide receiver a bit. So I'm going to wait there. So I'm going to address a different position and I'm going to go offensive tackle. Titus Howard from Alabama State, he's moving up boards. I think they need to address the tackle position. It really does fall off as you get into day two and even to day three. So I'm going to draft a tackle here. We're going to kind of just work our board. And so that gets us into day two now. And again, we're going to sort

of look for some value. Interestingly enough, we've got a couple of offers now on the table, one from Atlanta, one from Minnesota, to have our first pick in the third round, that ninth pick in the third round. Atlanta's offering us that pick in their third round pick, which is in the 15th spot in the third round, and their fourth round pick, which is also in the 15th spot. I'm going to decline these for now because I want to grab one of the guys with this first pick. I might be more willing to deal with some of those second picks. And so now, Patriots are now

on the clock. Again, we've got the Bears and the Colts sniffing around. But there are some very nice available players here. And there's a couple of different directions we can go. And so looking around the board here, I'm going to pass on that. I'm going to address the edge position. Chase Winovich is here, available for us. We can address edge, a guy that I think the Patriots will like.

And so we address that position, try to get a guy on the edge to at least get into the rotation a bit. This gives us a little bit of a backstop in case some of the guys don't work out. The John Simons, the Dietrich Wises of the world. Now, Patriots will be on the clock again. Just here in a second. Patriots will be back on the clock at the 97 spot. And this is their second sort of pick here in the third round. And we're going to address the wide receiver position now. I think it's time to do that. I don't want to wait

any longer. I do need somebody that could do a couple of different roles at the wide receiver spot. Maybe play a little inside, play a little outside. You get a guy that can do that, and the Patriots offense is a good fit. A guy that can do that? Andy Isabella from UMass. I've seen some walks with the Patriots going and drafting him, say even in the second round. We're getting him here in the third at pick

90... What was that? 97. We're almost immediately back on the clock. and there's a couple of different directions we can go again positions of need for us still are quarterback defensive line linebacker and running back and i think there's a way we can address the defensive line right now a guy that maybe has to play a little more five tech than truly on the edge, maybe a little bit more to the inside than you might expect, but a guy that could probably come in and help this defensive line a bit,

and that's Zach Allen from Boston College. So we'll take Zach Allen here from BC, and that's not a bad haul so far. We've addressed some needs, but we've kind of worked our board. So that gets us into day three now. And so we'll hit the day three picks in a second. But just to recap, Jonathan Abram, the safety, we get him early in the second round by trading out of 32. We get Dawson Knox, Titus Howard, Chase Winovich, Andy Isabella, and Zach Allen.

Now we've got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven picks left. Seven picks left after already making six. There's probably going to be some more wheeling and dealing when we get into day three here because the Patriots are going to move the board a bit. Remaining needs as user voted, quarterback, linebacker, running back, I'll fill in some bits and pieces and go for some value, but we might start stockpiling for 2020 picks. That's all ahead on this Mock Draft Monday here at Locked on Patriots.

Mark Schofield back with you now on this Mock Draft Monday here at Locked on Patriots. And kind of going through the board here, trying to fill in some pieces, do some value moving, move around the board a bit. I recapped just a few moments ago the picks that we've made so far in days one and two, but now it's time to get into the fourth round here.

And this is going to be an interesting spot. And if this is the way that things fall for the New England Patriots, this is nice because at least have it addressed tight end, have it addressed wide receiver. We can seek out some value. We can perhaps double dip at those positions if there are players that we like we'll probably address quarterback and maybe a linebacker

or a running back along the way and with seven picks we've got a couple of different ways we can play this and so have it address some of the needs we can now address some value and the patriots now are on the clock with pick 134. This is their fourth round pick. And let's look at perhaps the tight end position. We've got a couple of different options where we can double dip. Some of the bigger names are mostly gone, but the guys like Dax Raymond, Josh Oliver, Caden Smith, Elysey Mack, they're still available. And so I think there's still a couple of ways we can double dip here. You look at the wide receiver spot. This is where I think, yes, we drafted Isabella, but we might want to get him a running mate. And so I'm looking at the way this board has fallen. Now, having that pick early in

the fifth round makes me think that we can still wait because guys like Stanley Morgan, Tyree Brady, Greg Dortch, Hunter Renfro, they're still out here. So we can push this a bit. So let's just go for a value play here. And now I mentioned the linebacker spot. Maybe it's not the biggest position of need, but it is a need. And Blake Cashman from Minnesota is moving up boards. And so we're going to make a pick there. Blake Cashman

from Minnesota will address the linebacker spot. Now we're going to come back to the fifth round. We're going to stay here and I want to make a pick. I want to address the wide receiver spot again here in the fifth round. Now after this, we'll still have five picks, a sixth and four sevens to move around a bit. And I'll want to address quarterback and tight end with those. But here, we're going to address the wide receiver position again, Stanley Morgan from Nebraska. We draft him here. Now, looking at how the tight end sort of board has fallen, I want to make a move up more into the fifth round i want to make sure we can get somebody that we want at the tight end spot so let's try to make a trade here

and we have made a move here we have traded up we have gotten to the bills pick in the fifth round which is the 20th pick in the fifth round, which is the 20th pick in the fifth round, and given up a future fourth rounder in exchange for that. These seventh round picks, they're not fetching me a lot. So we've gone up, and now this is the pick at 158. And we're going to double dip now at the tight end position. We're going to draft Josh Oliver, tight end, from San Jose State. Now, kind of outside of the box here, the Patriots making two picks in the fifth round, but I think that that might be something that they want to do if they want to double dip at the tight end position. Now, we're going to start thinking about quarterbacks.

Now, the Patriots are next on the clock here at the end of the sixth round, but I might want to try to move up because I'm seeing the board and I'm watching the quarterbacks and there's Finley, there's Minshew, there's Rippon left. And so this has happened before where quarterbacks come off the board here. But as we're going through things, I'm trying to get traded. I'm trying to make a trade to go up. I'm trying with everybody. Nobody will trade with me because, look, these four seventh rounders aren't bringing value in return. Nobody wants to deal with me. And so we're forced to sit here and wait and watch the board. And thankfully, we get to the Patriots pick at the end of the sixth round.

Finley, Minshew, and Rippon are all available. So I'm just going to make sure we get our guide. Brett Rippon comes off the board here. Now that brings us into the seventh round. And now that we've pretty much addressed every position except for, say, running back, which is still listed as a need for the Patriots, we could just sort of fill in some bits and pieces and try to see if we can get a diamond or two in the rough. And so let's do that. Let's put that together here. As we get through this round here, we've got four picks all coming up at the end of the seventh round. The pick at 25 in the seventh, 29, 32, and now 38.

We've got these four picks to play around with. And so we can address a couple of different needs. And so let's just close this out by making some picks here shall we and Patriots now on the clock here 239 the first of these picks looking at the board the guys that are currently available to us and we're going to go with Mitch Hyatt the offensive tackle from Clemson get us a little depth at that swing tackle spot now as we look around the board Patriots back on the clock here with this 29th selection. We are going to go with safety. Mark

McLaurin from Mississippi State. David Archibald mentioned this in the Locked On Patriots Slack channel. Studies have kind of shown that safety is a pretty safe position. So hey, if you're just taking a flyer in the 7th round, why not draft a safety? Speaking of flyers, on the clock again at 246, Penny Hart, wide receiver,

Georgia State. Welcome to the New England Patriots. Maybe you can contribute a little bit on special teams. Now, finally, the last pick the Patriots have. This is the pick, 38th spot in the seventh round. This is a name they've drafted a couple of times. Running back, LJ Scott. Hey, we'll technically address

that running back position. So, there you have it this is the draft as we put together the class jonathan abram that pick at 39 after trading out of 32 dawson knox titus howard offensive tackle alabama state chase winovich edge from michigan andy isabella wide receiver from umass zach allen defensive line boston college blake cashman linebacker, Minnesota. Stanley Morgan, wide receiver, Nebraska. Josh Oliver, tight end, San Jose State.

Brett Rippin, the quarterback for Boise State. Mitch Hyatt, offensive tackle, Clemson. Mark McLaurin, safety from Mississippi State. Giving us basically Mississippi State's safety tandem. Hey, they'll know each other. There'll be some familiarity there. Then we close it out with Penny Hart, the wide receiver from Georgia State, and running back L.J. Scott.

The trades that we made, we sent pick 32 overall to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers for their pick early in the second round and their pick early in the fifth round. And later, we moved up in the fifth round. We sent a future fourth-round pick to the Bills for their pick in the 20th spot of the fifth round, which we drafted Josh Oliver with, moving up to make sure we get that double dip at the tight end spot. And so, hey, there you go. Would it be the craziest draft ever? Yeah, I don't think they're drafting 13 players, but I wanted to get a feel for how the things might shake out if you're trying to move

around the board. And I did learn something today, and this is good. Making those trades to sort of get up in the fifth and sixth round, a little bit tougher than I expected, probably because they're going by that trade value chart. And those late seventh rounders, they're basically worth one point on that value chart. And so trying to get up from the sixth round up was really difficult because you can't really make up the value when you get up. Even if you include that sixth rounder, when you've got those picks that are worth nine. Say for example, one of the trades I was trying to make. I was trying to move up from that pick in the sixth round at 205.

To get to say, I was trying to work with Buffalo at 181. And on that trade value chart, that Buffalo pick is worth 18.6 points. The New England one is worth nine points. And you can't really make up the gap there filling in with four seventh rounders that are all worth one point a piece. And so you'd either have to include a future pick or do something else. And I didn't want to include another future pick. And so, hey, again, we learned something. Learning something is good each and every day. So that will do it for this portion. Up next, I'm going to talk quickly about a mock draft I was a part of and tell you about

the decisions that I made at 32. That's ahead on this Mock Draft Monday here at Locked on Patriots. Mark Schofield back with you now. I'm going to close out this Mock Draft Monday here at the Locked on Patriots podcast. And if you were in and around the Locked On Patriots Slack channel on Friday afternoon, you might have been privy to a conversation I was having about the Locked On NFL Network's mock draft. What we did over at the Locked On Podcast Network was put together a mock draft amongst

all of the hosts. There's going to be a special show. I'm not going to spoil everything, but since you really won't hear from me from a Patriots point of view, I wanted to sort of walk everybody through how that went down. Let's put it this way. I traded out a 32, similar to what we did here. I made a deal with the Jacksonville Jaguars. We'll get into why and that deal in a second, but here's the reason. The board did not fall the way I wanted to. Obviously, some of the players I was eyeing were the two tight ends from Iowa, TJ Hawkinson and Noah Fant.

Well, Hawkinson comes off the board at seven to the Jacksonville Jaguars. And I could not, similar to the discussion we were just having, I tried to get up to the 29 spot. I tried to get up to the 21 spot. Now, part of the issue here is we don't have a host for the Seahawks show right now. And so they just made a pick for the Seahawks at 21. And at 29, look, the Chiefs were pretty happy with the player they ended up drafting, Nasir Adderley. Again, there's that Phil Perry trade. Nasir Adderley comes off the board at 29, which is the spot I wanted to get to

because at 30, they're the Green Bay Packers. They are lurking, and of course, they draft Noah Pham. And some options were available to me, such as perhaps I thought about Daniel Jones, I thought about Jeremy Simmons, and I thought about A.J. Brown because other wide receivers were off the board. D.K. Metcalf was off the board. Keneal Harry was off the board. Hakeem Butler was off the board. So I wasn't

going to go in that direction. A.J. Brown was pretty much the only wide receiver that I was considering there. I'm wary of Irv Smith. I didn't think I'd get him on 56 or 64. And so I didn't want to just force a pick. And so I started shopping it around. Initially, the Bucs came to the table and they initially offered Cameron Brate in their pick in the third round at 70. Brate is an interesting player. I do like him. However, I think there are better tight ends to be had even picking later. And so then they came back with, okay, well, what about Gerald McCoy in 70?

And again, I begged off of that. Gerald McCoy is a nice player, but I'm not sure how much gas is left in the tank. So I begged off that deal. Then the Packers came to the table, and they offered me their pick at 48, and then 114 and 118. So that would give us another pick in the second round. So that would be three second-round picks plus two more picks in the second round so that would be three second round picks plus two more picks in the fourth round a lot of value to be had there problem being

they made the same offer to the rams at 31 and the rams took it when they were on the clock before i could i said look i will do it glad to do it he's like look well i just shopped it to the rams too let me hear back from them. The Rams took it. So then now I'm stuck again. And that's when the Broncos get into the mix. And the Broncos were offering initially, basically what they were shopping was their pick in, I'm looking at it right now, their pick in the third round.

And then they kind of tried to sweeten it a bit. This was their initial. They said just the third round for this 32nd pick and i wasn't going to do that and then they said they would offer their second round of 41 their pick at 71 plus a fourth round room next year and that was interesting and it kind of made me think but then jacksonville came in offering 38 and 109. So they're picking the second round and they're picking the fourth round. And I kind of like that 38 spot because it's sort of similar in a sense to where we were at.

I think we traded, what, to 39 in this one? Let me just double check that to make the pick. And that gives you some good options. Yeah, we traded to 39. And so here we're trading to 38. And so part of the reason why I wanted to, in the simulation we just did, trade to that 39 spot was to see how does the board fall. And here we get Jonathan Abram at 39,

a player that is ranked in the top 25 by Matt Miller. And because of the way we play our board, we get a safety we like that might be a first-round safety. We get him at 39. And then we get Dawson Knox and we get Titus Howard. So we address safety, tight end, offensive tackle, three kind of positions of need. We get him at 39. And then we get Dawson Knox and we get Titus Howard. So we address safety, tight end, offensive tackle, three kind of positions of need.

And then we get the edge of the wide receiver and a defensive lineman in the third round. So we make six picks on day two, but we pretty much hit almost every single need for New England. And so I like the way it fell in the simulation. And in the mock draft we did over the Locked On Podcast Network, it's kind of the way that this trended as well. And so, hey, maybe you like it, maybe you don't. Either way, it's just another mock draft.

Let's face it, when push comes to shove, it's not going to be me making the calls. And maybe some of you out there are kind of excited to hear that. But that will do it for today. Tomorrow, I am working on a full-on round one mock draft for Pro Football Weekly. I'm going to break that down on Tuesday's show, and then we'll get into things the rest of the week. But that will do it for today. Have a fantastic Monday, and keep it locked right here.

It's me, Mark Schofield, and Locked on Patriots.