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More often than not, free-agency and draft predictions for teams are based more on educated guesses than anything concrete.
But some guesses are more educated than others, and one recent Pro Football Focus free-agent primer might deserve some more attention.
This post from last week from Arjun Menon and Brad Spielberger has already accurately predicted two landing spots for top-50 NFL free agents, nailing Geno Smith’s contract extension with Seattle to the year and exact number and correctly calling Derek Carr signing with New Orleans Saints.
Other forecasts, like Josh Jacobs returning to the Raiders via franchise tag, will become official on Tuesday.
That’s why it might be worth paying extra attention to the post’s predictions for the Patriots.
Specifically, Menon and Spielberger have New England snapping up now-free-agent tackle Orlando Brown, whom they rightly surmised would hit the open market instead of getting the franchise tag from Kansas City, and cornerback Jamel Dean.
“Brown didn’t really do much to change his perception this year; he is a good but not great tackle. New England has been aggressive in free agency in recent years and is desperate for help at the position, though,” the authors noted. “Brown earned a 60.0-plus pass-blocking grade in every 2022 contest from Week 5 on, with 11 grades above 70.0 over the stretch. He’d be a massive addition to this Patriots tackle group.”
Bottom line: Brown’s no Hall-of-Famer, but he’s absolutely an upgrade at left tackle that can lock things down for Mac Jones and clear the runaway for Rhamondre Stevenson.
Though Brown would be expensive — likely costing more than $20 million per year — the Patriots could clear space with a few cuts. In fact, should New England draft a young tackle in the draft, the team could potentially move on from Trent Brown and save $8 million in cap space. (Of course, they can also just keep the veteran Brown at right tackle, where he played well in 2021.)
In Dean, PFF sees a young corner that could get the Patriots back to their roots as a heavy press-coverage team on the outside, which they got away from slightly in 2022.
“The Patriots ranked 18th in press coverage grade for their outside cornerbacks last season with a 63.0 mark, whereas Dean's 79.7 grade ranked third among cornerbacks with at least 100 press coverage snaps,” the authors added.
Grabbing Brown and Dean would go a long way toward shoring up depth and adding starting talent at two key positions, with Dean offsetting the predicted departure of Jonathan Jones.
It also perhaps would shift New England’s draft strategy in the first round of the NFL Draft, making tackle and corner less of a top priority than replacing the expected loss of Jakobi Meyers (who leaves for the Houston Texans here) in free agency.
However, one can’t deny that gaining a solid young left tackle and man-coverage corner would go a long way to mitigating those losses and getting the Patriots back on a winning path.
