The NFL Draft is often full of surprises and curveballs, but the picture seems to be getting clearer for the Patriots and the other teams picking at the top Thursday night in Green Bay, Wis.
And that picture is focusing on Will Campbell, the highly productive but short-armed left tackle from LSU. The Patriots have a glaring hole at left tackle, and it is looking increasingly clear they are going to use the No. 4 pick on Campbell.
“I’ve just continually heard that offensive tackle was going to be addressed, and I’ve continually heard that that’s Will Campbell’s spot,” NFL Network draft analyst Daniel Jeremiah said Friday.
The three picks before the Patriots are gaining clarity as well. It would be a major upset if the Titans don’t want QB Cam Ward at No. 1, or the Browns don’t take receiver/cornerback Travis Hunter at No. 2. There is some intrigue that the Giants could pass over pass rusher Abdul Carter at No. 3, but that seems unlikely.
“I feel pretty confident that they would take Abdul Carter,” Jeremiah said. “I’ve heard nothing that would sway me away from that.”
That leaves the Patriots with several intriguing but imperfect options at No. 4. Considering their biggest needs and the strength of the draft board, their choice almost certainly will come down to a left tackle, a pass rusher, or running back Ashton Jeanty.
Jeanty is intriguing, but it seems unlikely the Patriots would use such a high pick on a running back. Then, when weighing left tackle vs. pass rusher, left tackle wins in a landslide.
It’s a bigger need — the Patriots already have Harold Landry, Christian Barmore, Milton Williams, Keion White, and Anfernee Jennings, while left tackle is a major hole with Vederian Lowe still penciled in as starter. Left tackle is much shallower than pass rushers in the draft — there could be up to 20 pass rushers drafted in the first three rounds, but there are only three or four left tackle prospects who could start as rookies.
The next issue for the Patriots is sorting out which offensive tackle is the right one at No. 4, between Campbell, Missouri’s Armand Membou, Texas’s Kelvin Banks, and Ohio State’s Josh Simmons, who is coming off a torn patellar tendon. The Athletic’s Dane Brugler has Campbell rated as the best offensive lineman in the draft, while ESPN’s Mel Kiper has Membou slightly ahead of Campbell.
“In the last 24 hours I’ve talked to three teams who aren’t in the range to take tackles,” Jeremiah said. “I had one team that was Will Campbell at the top, one team that was Armand Membou at the top, and one team that was Kelvin Banks at the top.”
Membou has ideal size at 6 feet 4 inches and 332 pounds, but all 29 of his starts in college came at right tackle. Former Jets and Dolphins general manager Mike Tannenbaum, though, had the Patriots taking Membou at No. 4 in one of his recent mock drafts.
“He can definitely play on the left side,” said Tannenbaum, now with ESPN. “I think Membou is going to be a really, really good left tackle.”
But switching Membou is risky, said his trainer, offensive line coach Duke Manyweather of OL Masterminds.
“Armand to me is a right tackle. I wouldn’t try to switch Armand to left tackle,” Manyweather said. “He’s a very cerebral kid, but you want him to flourish where he’s comfortable, and to me that’s at right tackle. I think people make the mistake of thinking they can draft a guy and switch him and have the same level of success, and that’s not always true.”
The No. 4 pick is likely a little high for Banks, rated outside the top 25 overall prospects by both Brugler and Kiper.
Which leads us to Campbell, who started 38 games at left tackle over three years. His one drawback is arm length, which measured 32⅝ inches at the Combine, less than the preferred length of 33 inches for NFL offensive tackles. There is some question as to whether Campbell’s long-term position is at guard, but he seems like the best bet to fill the left tackle hole at No. 4.
“The feeling in talking to folks is Will Campbell is really well-liked inside that building in New England,” Jeremiah said.
Manyweather, who has been training Campbell since last summer, said Campbell has the perfect demeanor for the type of tough culture Mike Vrabel is trying to build in Foxborough.
“With Will, he’s the real deal,” Manyweather said. “Brings it every day, self-motivated, highly competitive, high football IQ, and that tough-guy mentality that I think is going to fit Vrabel to a T.
“Anyone that’s been around him will tell you that he’ll come across the table and choke the [expletive] out of you if you get sideways with him, and that’s what you have to have sometimes.”
Manyweather also praised Campbell’s “violent hands” and said the arm length questions are completely overblown.
“If he didn’t use his hands really well, it might be an issue,” Manyweather said. “But because his hand usage is so good, to me it’s a nonfactor. And his ability to recover is probably the best in the draft class, and I think that’s really important on Sundays.”
Of course, now that we’ve gone through all of the tackle prospects, the Patriots probably will end up taking Jeanty or a pass rusher. But all the buzz points to Campbell.
Travis Hunter
Browns to let him play both ways
One player who almost certainly won’t be available at No. 4 is Hunter, who appears a lock to go No. 2 to Cleveland. Browns GM Andrew Berry on Thursday called Hunter a “unicorn” and compared him with another two-way superstar, Shohei Ohtani.
“One of the things that you can’t probably fully appreciate until you actually see Travis play live is just his elite conditioning,” Berry said. “There are more plays in a college game than there is a pro game. And it’s like the guy, he barely pants, like that kind of thing. So, it’s quite incredible.”
The only question is how Hunter is going to be utilized in the NFL. As much as Hunter wants to play full time at receiver and cornerback, Ravens coach John Harbaugh said it’s not realistic because playbooks are too complex.
“I don’t know if there are enough hours in the day for a player to be able to do that and to have every detail locked down,” Harbaugh said. “But you certainly can do it on one side of the ball and then have some sort of a package on the other side of the ball, which my guess is how the team will do it.”
Tannenbaum said that’s how he would use Hunter.
“I’d start him at corner and give him 15-20 snaps of very meaningful offensive plays at receiver,” Dolphins GM Mike Tannenbaum said.
But the only opinion that matters is the Browns’, and it sounds as if they are going to use Hunter primarily on offense.
“We would see his first home as receiver and his second home on the defensive side of the ball,” Berry said. “He has a number of rare qualities, but probably the rarest is his ability with the ball — his ball skills. And we would want to put him in a position that maximizes that ability.”
Quarterback market
Rodgers not ready to commit
While free agency is 5½ weeks old and most significant players have been signed, the quarterback market is surprisingly still in flux.
▪ The presumed marriage between the Steelers and Aaron Rodgers isn’t on such solid footing. Rodgers confirmed Thursday on “The Pat McAfee Show” he has been up front with the Steelers and all teams that he is not ready to commit at this point.
“Retirement could still be a possibility,” Rodgers said. “I’ve said, ‘Listen, if you need to move on, by all means.’ I am trying to be open to everything and not specifically attached to anything.”
Rodgers’s indecisiveness could force the Steelers’ hand during the draft, as they can’t go into a season with just Mason Rudolph and Skylar Thompson. The Steelers already traded their second-round pick (No. 52) for D.K. Metcalf, which likely makes it more imperative they get a first-round quarterback. There’s a chance Shedeur Sanders could drop to No. 21, but if they don’t want to pay to move up, the Steelers likely will be looking at Jaxson Dart, Jalen Milroe, or Tyler Shough as their options.
▪ The Saints, who haven’t taken a quarterback in the first round since Archie Manning in 1971, have been one of the top teams in need of a quarterback this draft. But that need turned into a must-have last week when it was revealed that Derek Carr is still dealing with a shoulder injury suffered last season that could affect his availability for the 2025 season. This after the Saints had no choice but to pay Carr $40 million for 2025 because it was guaranteed for injury in March and he couldn’t pass a physical.
So the Saints, picking No. 9, become an even more obvious landing spot for Sanders. My gut says the Saints don’t have to worry about the Giants (No. 3), Raiders (No. 6), or Jets (No. 7) snagging Sanders, and the only competition behind them is the Seahawks (No. 18) and Steelers (No. 21). Even if the Saints lose out on Sanders, they’re probably fine with Dart or Milroe.
▪ The Giants are still in the market for a quarterback despite signing Russell Wilson and Jameis Winston. And it still could be Sanders, just probably not with the No. 3 pick. The Giants held last-minute workouts last week with Sanders, Milroe and Shough, quarterbacks who could be in the range for the Giants’ second pick. They’re currently at No. 34 at the top of the second, but are a strong candidate to trade up into the late first.
Draft nuggets
All teams have first-round pick
▪ As of this weekend, all 32 teams have their original first-round pick. This has not happened since 2002 expansion and realignment.
▪ The Ravens have the most picks with 11, the Vikings have the fewest with four. The Chiefs hold the “Mr. Irrelevant” pick at No. 257.
▪ Ravens GM Eric DeCosta said his team has 217 players on its draft board, compared with 160 in other years.
“That means that the mid-rounds are going to be really good,” DeCosta said.
▪ The Patriots have used a draft pick on a kicker twice in recent years (Justin Rohrwasser in 2020, Chad Ryland in 2023), and might do it again. The Patriots, Ravens and Commanders are among the teams that have conducted private workouts with Florida State kicker Ryan Fitzgerald, he told The Draft Network. “He seems to be high on everyone’s list,” one AFC special teams coordinator told me.
The Ravens’ interest is a bad sign for Justin Tucker, who is being investigated for inappropriate sexual behavior with massage therapists. Miami’s Andres Borregales also should be drafted this year, “but he was inconsistent at the Combine,” the special teams coach said.
▪ It was interesting to see that Dart and Milroe were originally among the 17 prospects set to attend the draft, as neither is a lock to go in the first round. Sure enough, Jaxson Dart (Ole Miss) and Mykel Williams (Georgia) were not on the list of updated attendees released Friday by the NFL. If Jalen Milroe (Alabama) does attend, hopefully he knows what he’s getting himself into, because he’s setting himself up for a potentially painful night.
Joe Milton trade
Explanation makes no sense
Anyone else having a hard time buying Mike Vrabel’s explanation for trading Joe Milton two weeks ago to the Cowboys for a bag of peanuts?
“Well, we felt like his reps were going to be decreased as we worked through the offseason. We felt like … that we’re going to try to do what’s best for the team, and that’s the decision that we ultimately made,” Vrabel said.
So if we are to take Vrabel at his word, then the Patriots, after watching Milton author an eye-opening performance in that Week 18 win over Buffalo last season that had the NFL world buzzing, decided that the best course of action would be to decrease Milton’s reps the following year, and then trade him for nothing? So they could give more reps to … a 30-year-old journeyman quarterback (Joshua Dobbs) on his sixth team since 2017? 2018?
It’s ludicrous on its face. The far more plausible explanation is that the Patriots wanted to remove any threat of competition for Drake Maye and give him breathing room to establish himself as the team leader.
Extra points
The Patriots may not have to take Will Campbell at No. 4 if Mike Vrabel and Eliot Wolf can persuade new Raiders GM John Spytek to part with veteran left tackle Kolton Miller. He’s set to make $12.25 million in the final year of his deal, but has been skipping voluntary workouts and wants a new contract. Miller, 29, struggled some last year as he returned from a shoulder injury, but he’s still a top-15 left tackle and played for Josh McDaniels for two years … I actually agree with Aaron Rodgers — if the Jets’ new bosses were just going to cut Rodgers in a brief meeting with little conversation, they could have done it over Zoom instead of dragging Rodgers 3,000 miles across the country … The Commanders had some fun last year during the pre-draft process, bringing about 20 prospects on an outing to Topgolf. Not only did the Commanders do it again this year, but the Raiders borrowed their idea. “I know they were scouting to see who had a good swing or not,” Boise State running back Ashton Jeanty said of his visit with the Raiders … Drew Bledsoe has some competition in the Washington state wine game. Dan Marino and his former backup Damon Huard, a Washington native and a member of the Patriots’ first two Super Bowl teams, recently launched Passing Time winery outside Seattle … In his new book “The Art of Winning,” Bill Belichick said it was a “mistake” the Patriots didn’t draft Lamar Jackson in 2018, skipping over him twice at Nos. 23 and 31. Belichick said the Patriots didn’t know how much longer Tom Brady would play, and that they didn’t think creatively enough about how to incorporate Jackson. “It would be extremely tricky to run two parallel offenses, especially when only one would ever really see action in games,” Belichick wrote. “To be blunt about it: We didn’t adapt. We failed to make a commitment to adaptation that would have let us find a way to develop Lamar while still winning with Tom. It was possible. It could have been done. We should have tried. But we had our system, and we loved it. I made a mistake. Baltimore did not make a mistake.”
Ben Volin can be reached at ben.volin@globe.com.