La Canfora: Patriots May Face Risk/Reward Scenario If Marcus Peters, Dorial Green-Beckham Are Available
BOSTON (CBS) - Bob Socci, the voice of your New England Patriots, takes to the Sports Hub airwaves to discuss prospects, scouting reports, team needs, welcome special guests and everything else you need to know ahead of the 2015 NFL Draft every Sunday at 8am through the end of draft season!
Bob Socci welcomed CBS Sports NFL insider Jason La Canfora to the program on Sunday, after La Canfora wrote about "The 7 Coaches, GMs and Owners Who Will Swing NFL Draft." That list included Bill Belichick.
"This cat [Belichick] has turned more than one draft on its ear and is even less concerned with what we think than is [Chip] Kelly," La Canfora wrote. "Belichick has gone to great lengths to study receivers in this draft. But sitting at No. 32 might not where he wants to be to get one. Tom Brady isn't getting any younger and the Pats could be in position to make a big move. Trading up for a pass catcher would make sense, taking a shot on a troubled kid like Dorial Green-Beckham at 32 could be equivalent to landing Randy Moss a half decade ago. I wouldn't rule out taking a running back with the pick, either. But if there is an early run on receivers -- and my hunch is three go in the top 10 -- I can't help but wonder if the Pats jump up. Regardless, Belichick is always among the truly intriguing figures on draft day."
Socci asked La Canfora why Belichick might break character and decide to move up, rather than down, in the first round.
"Expect the unexpected," La Canfora said. "It's so tough when 31 other teams are picking, and there is that 32nd pick now ... there's a lot that can happen between midnight Thursday night when the first round wraps up and 6 p.m. Friday when it starts again. So I'm sure there will be teams trying to target a particular player there. The Patriots don't have a ton of holes, but certainly they've spent a lot of time investigating wide receivers. Obviously, they had a defection of corners, and so that's an area I'm sure they'd like to shore up. But they're a smart team that seems to always be drafting linemen, because it takes so many of them to get through a season, and obviously you build a team from the inside-out and the good ones are going to help you exponentially."
"There's a bunch of directions they could go in," La Canfora continued, "but moving up wouldn't stun me for them, either, because as you noted, are they really going to use all of these picks? And how many of these later picks are actually going to make the team anyway? So I could see a scenario where they maybe do move up. If there's a player or two they really like who gets into 16, 17, 18, whatever, they passed the halfway part of the first round, and there are still two or three kids that they're really high on that they think could be difference makers, then I don't rule [out] them trading up within reason to try to grab one of them."
That being said, La Canfora said it's just as likely that the Patriots stay put at 32.
"There could be some corners who make sense. There could be a kid like Mario Edwards ... I don't know what they'd do character-wise if Marcus Peters is there, with Dorial Green-Beckham. I don't know if they would gamble on one of those kids with the off-field issues or not. But I think there will be intriguing options. I don't think they'll take a running back there, but boy, you start kind of seeing how the draft sizes up -- it's not a goo draft for linebackers, it's not a goo draft for tight ends, it's not a goo draft for safeties. But most of those other positions, there could be someone there if they just stay at [32] who makes a whole lot of sense for them."
With regard to players like Peters or Green-Beckham, La Canfora said that in talking to NFL executives, they are treated on a case-by-case basis.
"It's really a team-by-team basis, and where you're comfortable having sort of that value kick in, and you say, 'Well he's too good to pass up here,'" La Canfora said. "Both those players are off some boards entirely. Some teams, because their owner or whoever -- their general manager, their team president -- is uncomfortable with them, they're just not going to take them. ... The Patriots post-Aaron Hernandez, how much does that affect what they do? I'm not sure. I'm sure they also on the other hand still feel like they've got leadership in the locker room and a winning culture that can maybe coax the best out of these kids. At that particular spot, I'm not sure they'd do it for the wide receiver [Green-Beckham], maybe they would for the corner [Peters], perhaps."
Listen to the full discussion, which covers a wide variety of league-wide topics heading into the draft, below:
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