The path from here to there in the NFL is a direct one.
Everyone knows the way, no Waze needed.
Straight and obvious.
One model for success.
And, yet, team after team will struggle with the journey.
What’s this oh so simple and straightforward plan to exit the outhouse where teams like the Bears, Commanders and Patriots currently reside?
Is it the supposedly hip, new, winning Houston model that was pushed to the NFL media forefront this week with the trade for receiver Stefon Diggs?
Or the San Francisco blueprint? Maybe the map used in Philly?
Actually what New England must do to return to NFL contention and maybe even greatness is be true to itself and its relatively recent roots.
The new way for the Patriots is probably the same as the old-school dynastic Patriot Way.
Which is the same as The Way in Kansas City. And previously downtrodden Cincinnati. Oh, let’s not forget Buffalo which couldn’t win a thing over the last couple decades until one minor but miraculously impactful thing changed.
The model for the Patriots this draft season isn’t a team. It’s a position.
The way for the Patriots to get their collective groove back under the collaborative leadership of Eliot Wolf and Jerod Mayo could not be easier to pinpoint or figure out.
Or more difficult execute.
It’s all about getting the right quarterback. Landing the Foxborough version of Patrick Mahomes, Joe Burrow, Josh Allen, Lamar Jackson or, apparently and swiftly, C.J. Stroud. Even the Gillette comp for Jalen Hurts, Tua Tagovailoa or Brock Purdy would pass for a passing grade in the coming months and years.
Oversimplified but simply true reality is that NFL football – actually football at all levels from Pop Warner and high school up through college and the pros – is now and probably forever more will be about the quarterback position.
Have one, really and truly have one, and your team is well on its way.
Lack one and your team is trying to play catchup with those who do.
It’s true on the field. And it’s true in the roster-building “models” off of it.
So all this talk about modeling things after the Texans. Or the 49ers. Or any other team is pretty much meaningless media mumbo-jumbo to fill the hours, days and weeks between now and the prime time draft action on April 25 when we all find out if the Patriots can take a massive step toward becoming a prime time-worthy team once again.
Trades. Ready-made rosters. Best player available. No. 1 wide receivers. Build from the trenches.
Poppycock.
It’s all nonsense. It’s all filler and fodder.
It all comes down to the quarterback position.
New England lived that successfully for more than two decades.
Sure the championship devil may be in the other details, but in order for the Patriots or any other NFL team to reach New England owner Robert Kraft’s desired goal of contending each and every year a franchise QB is a necessary prerequisite. A Dude. A Him.
That is the line between the haves and the have-nots in the NFL.
So what model should the Patriots follow on their path to the 2024 NFL Draft, on their path back to being able to compete with their contemporaries?
The one that most swiftly and successfully brings a high-end QB to New England.
That is the right way to do it. That is the only way to do it.
So, yes, the Houston is model is the one the Patriots should follow. Get a ready-made, rookie-phenom franchise QB who isn’t the top passer taken in the draft.
It’s that simple.
Oh, and that difficult.