Are the Patriots Now Forced into Drafting a Wide Receiver?

With the Steelers matching the offer on Emmanuel Sanders this may force the Patriots hand to draft a wide receiver. As a fan, you should all be terrified at the notion of them drafting because they just haven’t had much luck in that department. The Patriots have money to spend and the Steelers were a bit strapped so I don’t understand the philosophy of not blowing them out of the water. Isn’t this the same coach that keeps his starters in even when we are up by 20 in the fourth quarter? Isn’t this the same guy that went for it on fourth and two against the Colts? It seems that aggressiveness doesn’t carry over into getting player you want in free agency or even on your own team (example Wes Welker).

Here are some of the Patriots’ recent accomplishments at drafting a wide receiver since 2003. I have broken it up by the year the player was drafted, the round they were drafted in and finally the player selected:

2003	Round 2	Bethel Johnson
2004	Round 5	P.K. Sam
2006	Round 2	Chad Jackson
2008	Round 5	Matthew Slater
2009	Round 7	Julian Edelman
2009	Round 3	Brandon Tate
2010	Round 3	Taylor Price
2012	Round 7	Jeremy Ebert

That list is a big bag of suck. You could argue that their best pick was a lucky seventh rounder in Julian Edelman who hasn’t proved much yet besides being injury prone. Four out of these eight picks are in the third round or before, which has high value. They are not just taking stabs at receivers in the seventh and eighth rounds and failing, but they are using high picks to try and get these players.

Using that many picks and half of them being in the third round or before shows me that they know they have needed somebody there and, even more scary, they have tried to fix it for 10 years. Are any of those players NFL starting material? The answer is no, no, no and no. The biggest problem to me isn’t missing out on Emmanuel Sanders, who was a good talent at the NFL level, the biggest problem is the fact that they may now have to evaluate and draft a wide receiver. Looking at that list it’s scary to think of who it could be this year.

Josh Brown
@TitleTownTalkSB