At pick No. 257, the Patriots selected Memphis defensive back Kobee Minor with their third and final pick of the seventh round.
He joins Cal safety Craig Woodson as the only other defensive back taken by New England in this year’s draft.
At 5-foot-11 and 188 pounds, Minor reportedly runs a 4.56 40-yard dash, and has a Relative Athletic Score of 2.93 out of 10, per NBC Sports Boston. In addition to his lone season at Memphis, Minor also had stints at Texas Tech (2020-22) and Indiana (2023). He’s a native of Dallas, and was rated as a consensus three-star recruit coming out of high school.
If all of this sounds very, uh, pedestrian, that’s because it is. He’s the last pick of the draft, it’s not supposed to look all that awesome at this point.
But in the case of Minor being the selection here for New England, it’s more pedestrian than the average “Mr. Irrelevant,” as The Athletic’s Dane Brugler had Minor ranked as his 127th best cornerback in the draft.
So what gives?
“Yeah, Kobee's a guy that our scouts that went into Memphis this year got on early,” said Patriots executive vice president of player personnel Eliot Wolf on Webex at the conclusion of the seventh round on Saturday. “I think to answer your question, he was a double transfer guy. He started his career at Texas Tech and then played one year at Indiana and then actually transferred to Memphis this year. He transferred kind of late, so I don't know that he was necessarily on the radar early in the season for some people. Then he had a hamstring, so he came back from it and played well.
“The movement skills at practice, the ability to play the football in the air, his competitiveness, we brought him in for a pre-draft visit, a 30-visit, and he did a really nice job on that. He was a guy that we had some affinity for. ‘Mr. Irrelevant,’ a pretty cool experience for him, but we were excited to be able to add him.”
Minor will receive the moniker of “Mr. Irrelevant” for the rest of his career, a title unofficially given by fans and media to the final player selected each year at the draft.
Minor becomes the third “Mr. Irrelevant” pick in franchise history, joining Kentucky linebacker Marty Moore from 1994 and William Penn tight end Andy Stokes from 2005.
Back in 1994, pick No. 222 was the “Mr. Irrelevant” spot. At 6-foot-1 and 244 pounds, Moore went on to play in the NFL for eight seasons, seven of which with the Patriots (1994-99; 2001) and one with Cleveland (2000). Moore made "Mr. Irrelevant" history with New England, being the first player with that title to play in a Super Bowl (1996), and later becoming the first last-pick to win one (2001).
If Minor can have a fraction of this type of success for New England, it would be a massive win for a player that watched 256 players selected ahead of him.
Stokes’ career, on the other hand, is one Minor probably wants to stay away from. After defying the odds and being selected as a player from an NAIA school in Oskaloosa, IA, Stokes was unable to make the Patriots’ roster out of training camp. After unsuccessfully trying to catch on with the Cardinals later that summer and the Seahawks in 2007, Stokes called it a career.
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