Patriots Trade for Trent Brown and the Draft Makes Way More Sense Now
Good God, how I love this move. I love it like it’s going to show me Infinity War, make me dinner, get me drunk and take advantage of me after. I know a trade of a draft pick for a tackle isn’t the kind of thing that moves the needle for a lot of people, but it does mine. From 6 to 12.
The Patriots acquisition of Trent Brown, which has been rumored all day, not only replaces the one un-replaced free agent loss, Nate Solder. It helps last night 1st round make more sense. I spent last night and all this morning trying to make sense of them drafting a 6-3, 315 lb tackle, which is going completely off the reservation for them. And within hours they swing a deal for an enormous Jaeger-sized tackle to bookend Marcus Cannon. Brown is 6-9, 376 lb, giving Dante Scarnecchia almost 740 pounds of fleshy Jersey barrier to work with on the ends of his line in order to protect the oldest elite QB in history.
And Brown is more than just huge. Pro Football Focus graded him 8th in the league in pass protection among all tackles, right or left. By their metrics he had a pass blocking efficiency of 97.0, allowing just only one sack, six hits and nine hurries on 415 drop backs.
Also, if you’re still fighting his battle, there’s this, from September 17 of last season, at Seattle:
What this means going forward as far as how guys line up, who knows? It certainly frees them up to slide Isaiah Wynn to one of the guard spots, which were a problem at times last year. The thing I worried most about in the Super Bowl – and said it on Laces Out, was Brandon Graham sliding inside on passing downs and creating a mismatch, which is exactly what he did on the strip sack that stuck the final knife into the Patriots skull. Now they’ve added the best interior pass protector in the draft and an elite outside pass blocker. And all Brown costs them is 48 draft spots and a cap hit of less than $2 million. Plus if he leaves as a free agent in 2019, they get a compensatory pick.
As far as who plays where, Nick Caserio talked after the draft last night about just putting the five best O-lineman out there and sorting it out. Besides, the distinction between LT/RT is almost non-existent now, with guys like Von Miller, Khalil Mack and Joey Bosa all coming off the offense’s right side. The important thing is in the last 18 hours, they have added a (practically literal) ton of offensive line talent to a unit that needed it. Thus freeing them up to spend tonight shoring up the other side of the ball.
It took a few hours, but now it’s all making sense.
