Patriots
If the Commanders select Drake Maye, the Patriots would likely “pounce” on the opportunity to draft Daniels, according to ESPN.
The Patriots seem to be content with how things might shake up in the first round of Thursday’s NFL Draft, no matter what the Commanders do with the second overall pick.
New England is “prepared to take a quarterback” as they have high grades on both Jayden Daniels and Drake Maye, ESPN’s Jeremy Fowler reported Saturday. As Daniels has been expected to be selected by Washington at No. 2 in recent weeks, the “feeling around the league” is that Maye winds up going No. 3, Fowler added.
Daniels and his team threw a curveball though in recent days on the possibility of being drafted by the Commanders. Washington’s decision to host other quarterback prospects during Daniels’s visit with the team earlier in the week didn’t sit well with his agent, according to ESPN’s Adam Schefter.
While Daniels still remains the favorite to be the No. 2 pick, the LSU quarterback has interest in playing for the Raiders and Vikings, according to Fowler. However, Daniels knows that he can’t control who drafts him and is “prepared to go” wherever he’s drafted, Schefter reported Friday.
Regardless of what the Commanders do with the No. 2 pick, the Patriots will have one of Daniels or Maye available to them at No. 3. As the Patriots hold the last ticket to draft one of the perceived top-three quarterback prospects, trade rumors continue to swirl. However, they haven’t been “wowed” yet by a trade offer yet, according to Fowler.
Patriots director of scouting and de facto general manager Eliot Wolf made similar comments when he spoke with reporters at the Patriots’ pre-draft press conference earlier in the week. While he said the team is “open for business” with all of their draft picks, he said the team hadn’t received an offer that would qualify as a “bag” for the No. 3 pick.
Obviously, things can change from now and Thursday. Vikings coach Kevin O’Connell seemed to acknowledge that his team is looking to draft a quarterback at a speaking event in a Minnesota church on Thursday. He even went as far as to joke that he’s sent Robert Kraft a bouquet of flowers for a possible trade-up from No. 11 to No. 3.
J.J. McCarthy is still looming as well. The Michigan quarterback has been a top-five pick in the majority of recent mock drafts, with some predicting the Patriots will draft him at No. 3.
There have been numerous reports that New England has some degree of interest in McCarthy, with one earlier in April suggesting that Wolf’s a big fan of the quarterback. The team hosted McCarthy on a pre-draft visit over two days earlier in the week, making him one of four quarterbacks (Daniels, Maye, Michael Penix Jr.) to visit New England in the pre-draft process.
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