If Eliot Wolf is indeed the one making the call for the Patriots this spring when they’re on the clock at No. 3, his father Ron — the former general manager of the Packers and a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame — isn’t sure whom his son might be inclined to draft.
But he knows what he would do.
“I would go with the best player available,” said the father, who helped shape the great Green Bay teams of the 1990s.
Does that mean his son should advocate for a successor to Mac Jones, a quarterback such as Jayden Daniels or Drake Maye? Or should the Patriots select wide receiver Marvin Harrison Jr.? Maybe a franchise left tackle in Joe Alt?
“When it comes to this draft and the Patriots, I also understand this: You can’t go anywhere these days without someone taking that snap from center,” said the elder Wolf. “That’s the most important position in the game.”
If the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree — and given their shared football philosophy, it’s easy to say it doesn’t — Eliot Wolf’s first act of team-building as the de facto general manager of the Patriots could very well be selecting a quarterback with the third overall pick.
“What are you going to do, take a wide receiver?” Ron Wolf said. “You have to have someone to throw him the ball.”
With the Patriots at a crossroads in the early days of the post-Bill Belichick Era, the younger Wolf has emerged as a powerful presence in Foxborough. A report from NFL Media indicated that Wolf is expected to be in charge of the personnel department moving forward. That means he’ll have control of the 53-man roster and work closely with coach Jerod Mayo when it comes to the team-building process.
While he doesn’t have the official title of GM — Matt Groh reportedly is in line to serve as head of the scouting department, which likely means a split in overall GM duties — Wolf’s fingerprints already are all over the coaching staff. New offensive coordinator Alex Van Pelt and Alonzo Highsmith were part of the staff in Green Bay when Wolf served in the Packers front office.
And while the chain of command is still to be determined when it comes to personnel, it’s clear Wolf has ascended to one of the most prominent roles on the masthead since his arrival in Foxborough in 2020 as a consultant.
To those he worked with in Green Bay, it feels like the next logical step; they describe Wolf as someone who is ready to take full personnel control of a team.
“Eliot’s dad was the best. He couldn’t have had a better teacher,” former Packers president and CEO Bob Harlan said. “Eliot was very intelligent and very thorough in his scouting.”
Making a reputation in Green Bay
Eliot Wolf began his career in Green Bay, following his father to work on weekends as a 10-year-old in the early 1990s, watching video and occasionally offering opinions.
“I would give him a checklist of things to look for,” his father said.
“Even as a young kid, he’d be in the draft room all day,” recalled Harlan. “And every time a player was taken, Eliot would go up and take his name off. He knew where it was on the board.”
He wrote his first scouting report for an NFL team as a 14-year-old intern with the Falcons in 1996, and after graduating from the University of Miami in 2003, he became a pro personnel assistant with the Packers in 2004, working closely with then-coach Mike Sherman.
“He had an opportunity,” Ron Wolf said. “Mike Sherman gave it to him and he ran with it.”
According to those in Green Bay who worked with him, there was no sense of entitlement, no sense that you didn’t want to ruffle the feathers of the son of one of the most iconic names in franchise history. Only a commitment to hard work and getting it right.
“He’d watch hours and hours of tape,” recalled Sherman, “and he was very accurate in a not-so-accurate profession.
“He was always quiet. At the same time, he always had an opinion about every player. As they say, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, and that was the case here. He and his dad are the same way. The son was very much the same way — very conscientious and very studious when it came to studying players.”
Wolf made his reputation over the next decade in Green Bay, eventually rising from pro personnel assistant to director of football operations in 2017. He was thought to be in line to take over as GM, but that job was given to Brian Gutekunst on Jan. 7, 2018.
It was a bittersweet moment for Wolf and his family, according to those who know him. The Packers were the organization where he had come of age as a personnel man, and the fact that Green Bay reportedly had blocked Wolf from interviewing for at least one GM job in the past had led some to believe he was the successor to Ted Thompson.
Three days after Gutekunst was named GM, Wolf left Green Bay to become an assistant GM with the Browns.
“Obviously, the people up there don’t think he’s worthy or they would have hired him. End of discussion,” Ron Wolf told ESPN when the decision was made.
Wolf spent two seasons in Cleveland with John Dorsey, and interviewed for GM vacancies in Chicago and Minnesota before joining the New England front office in 2020 as a consultant. With the Patriots, he was an important ally for Belichick, eventually becoming director of scouting in 2021 and director of player personnel in 2023.
Old-school leanings
According to one person close to Wolf, when it came to player evaluation, his decision to (mostly) bypass analytics in favor of an old-school scouting philosophy that relied more on videotape study and in-person connection found him a like mind in the former Patriots coach.
“Certainly, he’s been able to help me in terms of, ‘Take a look at this. Here’s the way we did this,’ ” Belichick said in 2020. “It might be something we tried and we don’t want to do it that way, so it might be something that’s, ‘No, I hadn’t really looked at it that way, that’s a pretty good idea.’ It’s good to generate new ideas like that.”
Now, with Belichick gone and the Patriots’ braintrust undergoing a change, Wolf’s impact has really been felt. A number of new assistants have a background with Wolf, in Green Bay or Cleveland, including Van Pelt and Ben McAdoo, as well as quarterbacks coach T.C. McCartney, who was with Wolf in Cleveland. In addition, Highsmith, who has served as an executive with Green Bay, has been hired in a still-to-be-determined role.
So what sort of personnel exec will he be? If he decides to follow his father’s playbook, Wolf will likely tend to be on the aggressive side. His father was known as a forward-thinking GM, taking advantage of free agency in the early 1990s when many teams were still trying to figure out the process. He famously helped court Reggie White, and turned a 4-12 team into a Super Bowl champion in five years.
“The great thing about the business he’s in now is that when it comes to free agency, a premier free agent is just as valuable as a first-round pick,” Ron Wolf said. “It’s a wonderful thing — I don’t think you can lose sight of that factor as well.”
When it comes to the draft, if the son follows the lead of the father, it figures to be a collaborative process, one that includes a wide array of individuals.
“What Ron always did, he always had his mind made up on what he wanted to do,” recalled Harlan. “He’d go to the scout who saw that player, let him get up and say his reasons. Then, he’d bring in a coach at the position and hear what he thought. I can see that working the very same way with Eliot.
“You have to take advantage of the people who have seen this kid, and get a sense from the position coaches as to how they might fit in the system. You always have to figure that position coaches are going to have to figure out how to use the guy. He will do that. I also think Eliot would probably still rely on his father quite a bit.”
“That was always the feeling in our draft room — best player available, as opposed to reaching for a certain position,” Sherman said. “That was the philosophy in Green Bay when we were there with his dad, Ron. And I imagine that will carry over to his son.”
Wolf is emerging as a key piece of the front office at a critical time for the franchise. The Belichick Era is in the rearview mirror, the team has the No. 3 overall pick, and the Patriots are expected to have the fourth-most cap space of any team at the start of free agency.
Can he be the one to lead the Patriots back to prominence?
Those who know the 41-year-old best suggest he’s capable of meeting the moment.
“He’ll add a lot of talent,” Harlan said. “He’s very serious about the business, and very knowledgeable. I think he’ll be an excellent GM for you guys up there.”
Christopher Price can be reached at christopher.price@globe.com. Follow him on Bluesky at christopherprice.bsky.social.