With 11 selections in hand, tied for second most among the league’s 32 teams, the New England Patriots entered the NFL Draft in prime position to move around the board and attempt to maximize the value of their selections. In total, they ended up swinging four trades.
The reigning AFC champions moved up the board in both the first and second rounds, and later traded back twice on Day 3. Using the different trade charts collected by NFL analyst Joseph Hefner, let’s take a look at those transactions to see how the team performed from a value perspective.
Before starting out, though, a quick word on the different charts. There are two types: trade charts and player value charts. In the simplest of terms, the first group aims at analyzing the value teams put on the different selections, while the others look at how players selected in those spots have historically performed relatively to factors such as their rookie contract values.
The first round of the NFL Draft saw a run on offensive linemen, with eight of them having come off the board by the time the Bills were on the clock at No. 28 overall. Among those eight were five offensive tackles, leaving only one of the consensus top-tier guys left standing: Caleb Lomu out of Utah.
If a team wanted to leave Round 1 with a tackle, now was the time because there was a clear drop-off after Lomu. The Patriots didn’t hesitated, and opted to invest two selections — No. 31 and No. 125 in the fourth round — to jump up three spots with their division rivals
Judging the move solely by the trade value charts, we can see that it is a fairly even one. While the Patriots got slightly better value on the Jimmy Johnson chart, the Bills came out ahead on the Rich Hill chart (which is a more accurate reflection of how teams view picks these days). That slight pro-Buffalo tilt was also found by NFL analyst Anthony Reinhard, whose trade calculations resulted in an 0.8% premium paid on the move by New England — making this a marginal overpay.
“I would say we we’ve been working the phones pretty regularly, not only today but throughout the week, just trying to find different contingencies,” Patriots executive vice president of player personnel Eliot Wolf told reporter after the first round.
“There were a lot of trades. There continue to be a lot of trades. I think there was one right when I was walking down here as well. But yeah, we were very active on the phones. Ryan [Cowden] and Matt Groh did a great job of kind of working the phones and trying to understand where the value was. And ultimately, with Caleb still on the board, we just felt like giving up the extra pick to make sure that we could acquire him was important.”
While the Patriots ended up sending two picks to Buffalo, the Bills decided to repurpose those in follow-up moves. As a consequence, the preliminary haul that stemmed from that first-round trade look as follows:
Buffalo gets: ED T.J. Parker (2-35), CB Davison Igbinosun (2-62), OT Jude Bowery (4-102), WR Skyler Bell (4-125), 2027 seventh-round pick
The Patriots were not done trading up in the draft after their first-round move. In the second round, they again opted to be aggressive in order to pursue one of their targeted players: Gabe Jacas out of Illinois.
Day 2 had started with five edges coming off the board within the first 13 picks. The Patriots again were not willing to let the board come to them, and instead shipped there draft picks to L.A. in order to move from the 63rd to the 55th overall selection.
As can be seen, the Rich Hill chart identifies a point differential of 2.73 in favor of the Chargers, equivalent to a late sixth- or early seventh-round pick. Compared to historical data, meanwhile, New England paid a 6.5% premium on the move — making it one of the most expensive trades on the first two days of this year’s draft.
Of course, those are still relatively fine margins for an eight-position jump in the second round.
“We were exploring the board, and Gabe was the highest rated player that we had on there,” said Eliot Wolf on Friday night. “Obviously at a position of need, and we just felt like rather than waiting. Frankly, again, I said this last night about Caleb, too, but I was a little bit surprised that he wasn’t off the board already. So, we tried to pull the trigger. We were calling a bunch of teams before we ended up making the trade, and fortunately the Chargers wanted to acquire some more picks, so we were able to get up and get the player that we coveted.”
The picks that exchanged hands were ultimately used as follows:
Los Angeles gets: OL Jake Slaughter (2-63), S Genesis Smith (4-131), O Logan Taylor (6-202)
After a pair of trade-ups on the fist two days of the draft, the Patriots went in the opposite direction on Day 3. They used the 191st selection to move back five spots in the sixth round, and pick up the 245th pick in the draft along the way.
At this stage in the draft, player value becomes relatively negligible as far as trades are concerned. Sixth- and seventh-round picks are all dart throws to an extent, with teams going after developmental traits more than the security provided by historical precedent.
If we look only at the trade charts, we can see that this move was also relatively fair for both teams. Per the Rich Hill chart, the Patriots gained an excess value below the final pick of the draft (No. 257).