When the New England Patriots drafted Cole Strange 29th overall in the NFL Draft last week, it felt like a reach.
And hey, maybe it was. But the Patriots clearly valued the Tennessee-Chattanooga offensive lineman, and they apparently weren’t the only ones with a rosy outlook on him.
Strange was graded by most draft analysts as a late second or third-round pick. Sean McVay saying the Rams thought they could have gotten him at 104th overall didn’t help sway public opinion on the selection favorably.
But in offering his take on the selection, former NFL executive Mike Lombardi said on his “GM Shuffle” podcast that the Patriots weren’t alone in giving him a good draft grade.
“I was told by a team in the league that they had the guy somewhere between 25 and 35, that’s where his range was," the Audacy NFL insider said. "And I was told by a team in the league that Zion Johnson from Boston College they had behind (Strange). But everybody loves Zion Johnson, everybody loves Zion Johnson so Xion has not been under any scrutiny at all at Boston College, he’s under no scrutiny.”
Johnson ended up going 17th overall to the Los Angeles Chargers.
The consensus seems to be that Strange will be a perfectly fine NFL player, but that the Patriots had other needs to address that the first-round pick should have been used on. That, obviously, is not Strange’s fault.
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