Go ahead and draft a quarterback — but do not play him

The only logical plan for the Patriots at the No. 3 spot in the NFL Draft is obvious.

Take the quarterback. Take him with confidence and conviction. And don’t look back.

Presuming Southern Cal’s Caleb Williams goes No. 1, I’d prefer North Carolina’s Drake Maye, who is more than two years younger than LSU’s Jayden Daniels.

The need is immense at the most important position in professional sports, the options are appealing, and opportunities to pick in the top three don’t come along often. This is the Patriots’ chance.

Take the quarterback. Then comes the hard part, because there is a necessary addendum to this that will be difficult to heed for rookie head coach Jerod Mayo, de facto general manager Eliot Wolf, and the cast of post-Bill Belichick decision-makers eager to make their mark repairing this roster.

Do not play the rookie quarterback, whoever it is, right away. Do not play him for perhaps the entirety of his rookie season. Let him sit and learn and acclimate for a year.

That might not be the best thing for the 2024 Patriots, who are going to be desperate to prove that Mayo has the franchise pointed in the right direction after a frustrating end to Belichick’s extraordinary tenure. The quarterback they draft will have more raw talent — significantly more — than Jacoby Brissett or Gardner Minshew or any other veteran placeholder.

But playing a rookie quarterback next season likely would add degrees of difficulty to his chances of success, and it might be setting him up to fail altogether. The Patriots should have a goodto-excellent defense, but I’ve seen franchises not far removed from expansionteam status with better offensive talent.

(The 1996 Jaguars, for instance, had Jimmy Smith and Keenan McCardell at receiver and Mark Brunell at quarterback in their second season of existence. At least two of those guys could probably help the Patriots right now.)

All the Patriots offense needs beyond a quarterback is a left tackle, a right tackle if Michael Onwenu isn’t franchised or re-signed, a third-down back, at least two high-quality receivers, and a tight end if Hunter Henry departs. So, yeah, just about everything.

The Patriots have cash to burn in free agency, but the historic rise in the salary cap ($255.4 million, up a record $30-plus million over last year) means other — and better — teams have more to spend than expected.

Some help will come in the draft; they must draft at least one receiver and a tackle in the early rounds after they get their quarterback, and it wouldn’t be the worst idea to spend all of their draft capital on offense.

But unless they hit multiple personnel jackpots this offseason, the Patriots offense is still going to be short on established talent. It’s going to take multiple successful drafts to build this back up.

A quarterback on a rookie contract is the most valuable asset in the NFL. The Patriots botched this with Mac Jones, whose destiny now ought to be as Trevor Lawrence’s backup for the next half-dozen years in Jacksonville. Making a rookie quarterback play in a deeply disadvantageous situation is a way to botch an asset of far greater value than Jones.

A rookie quarterback, even one who carries the great expectations of an early first-round draft pick, should not be foisted into a situation in which he’s playing behind a line missing a puzzle piece or two with a shortage of quality skill players at his disposal.

Some have suggested that the state of the Patriots offensive depth chart is so dire that they shouldn’t draft a quarterback at all, and instead go Best Offensive Skill Player Available, which probably means Ohio State wide receiver Marvin Harrison Jr., a Larry Fitzgerald clone.

Respected draft analyst Matt Miller took this route a few weeks ago, sharing this thought on his @nfldraftscout account on Twitter/X: “Pre-Combine draft take . . . The Patriots should not draft a quarterback at No. 3 overall. This roster isn’t ready for a rookie QB and would just set his development back.”

The sentiment is understandable. The roster assessment is accurate. But they have to take the quarterback. This is their opportunity.

A receiver cannot be the priority, as appealing as Harrison may be. Receiver and running back are the last pieces to be added to a rebuilding offense, not the first. It’s too high to take someone like Notre Dame tackle Joe Alt. What they need to do is intensely study and relentlessly evaluate the quarterbacks expected to go at the top of the draft, as if the franchise’s future depends on getting this right. Because it does.

Such evaluations are not easy. Hall of Fame quarterback Kurt Warner recently lamented in a fascinating thread on Twitter/X how difficult it is to properly evaluate college quarterbacks.

He wrote: “I know many of you LOVE college football, but as I start to dive into these college QBs, it’s hard for me to even watch: very few play on schedule, the pass concepts are a mess most of the time, they run the same play over & over, a million bubble screens, can’t find many concepts that translate to next level . . . and then ppl are asked to figure out how good they will be at next level!? (Nearly impossible in my mind).”

I suspect Warner would agree with this, however: The extreme degree of difficulty in assessing draft-ready quarterbacks does not mean teams should pass on them. What they must do is evaluate, evaluate, and evaluate some more. Nitpick everything about Maye, Daniels, Williams, and even J.J. McCarthy, Bo Nix, and Michael Penix, then recognize which nitpicks are relevant and which should be dismissed.

Do the homework, and then when the draft comes, pick the quarterback you believe in. Then sit him, for that will enhance his chances to succeed.

The circumstances are different, but it must be noted that sitting for a year did not hurt Patrick Mahomes. Sitting for three years behind Brett Favre did not stunt Aaron Rodgers. Would Tom Brady have been ready in 2001 if he did not have a redshirt year in 2000?

Allowing a rookie quarterback time — even a full season — to adjust to everything demanded of him is the best way to set him up for success.

Oh yes, it’s going to require admirable discipline from the Patriots staff to follow this path. The fans will be restless. Sports radio will be calling for the new kid to play with every sad mallard heaved up by the placeholder veteran. So too will your friendly neighborhood sports columnist, I imagine.

But that’s all right. The path is clear, if the Patriots will just allow themselves to see it.

Take the QB. Do not play the QB. It’s the hard thing to do. Time will prove it’s the right one.