Patriots Set To Take On ‘A Little Bit Of A Void’ In Second Round Of 2020 NFL Draft

The New England Patriots face a gap of 64 picks in 2020 NFL draft.

After No. 23 overall, the war room isn’t scheduled to be on the clock again until No. 87 overall.

No selection in the second round is the result of last October’s trade with the Atlanta Falcons for wide receiver Mohamed Sanu. But it isn’t a move that Patriots head coach Bill Belichick will guess again now that the calendar has turned to April.

The rights to a dozen choices remain in the cabinet.

“We have a lot of draft picks. Some of them are kind of more in a certain area,” Belichick told reporters on his pre-draft conference call Monday. “We have a little bit of a void there in the second round. Although that player, Sanu, filled a need for us. So, that’s OK.”

Sanu would catch 27 passes for 218 yards and one touchdown up through the AFC wild card with New England. The 6-foot-2, 210-pound Rutgers product started seven games and appeared in nine. He underwent surgery following the campaign after battling through an ankle injury during it.

His most productive showing came in a November loss that brought 10 receptions for 81 yards and a run to the end zone.

Sanu, who turns 31 in August, is now set to carry a cap number of $6.5 million into the final year of $32.5 million contract that New England inherited. He’s set to carry it in the company of a former Super Bowl MVP in Julian Edelman and a top 2019 draft investment in N’Keal Harry. The receiver depth behind them includes the undrafted Jakobi Meyers and recent free-agent arrival Damiere Byrd.

As for the pick that was once in the hands of the Patriots? No longer is it in the hands of the Falcons.

No. 55 overall was packaged to the Baltimore Ravens as the new league year opened in exchange for tight end Hayden Hurst.

It’s unclear what name could have become of that number. The Patriots took Vanderbilt cornerback Joejuan Williams in the second round last spring. In the recent springs prior, that range brought additional secondary prospects in Florida’s Duke Dawson, Alabama’s Cyrus Jones and Stanford’s Jordan Richards.

The last time New England invested capital between Nos. 33 and 64 overall on offense came in 2014, when Eastern Illinois quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo got the call.

But the history dates back further.

“You’ve got guys like Matt Light and Jamie Collins and Rob Gronkowski,” said Belichick. “There’s plenty of second-rounders that had good careers here. We’ll see how it goes. But look, each draft is different, every year is different, each player is different. So, I think to sit here and rehash the 2015 draft or the 2006 draft or whatever it is – again, there are fundamentals to the process and we always try to improve those. So, we’ll try to do the best job that we can this year in every round – first round, second round, if we’re in the second round. Right now, we’re not even in the second round. But whatever rounds we’re officially in, we’ll try to maximize the value and help our team the best that we can.”

New England stands in position to fill out a trio of draft cards in the third round. Another eight cards are scheduled from that point onward.

At this time.

The Patriots traded up three times and down four times in the process of last year’s draft.