Patriots add experienced NFL executive in first front office hire of 2024
The New England Patriots have spent the last few weeks starting to fill out their coaching staff, but there hadn’t been any public additions to the front office since the season ended. That changed on Wednesday.
According to a new report by The Athletic, the Patriots are hiring Alonzo Highsmith as a front office executive. The report notes Highsmith’s exact title with the team has not yet been determined.
UPDATE: According to NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport, Highsmith will be a ‘senior personnel executive.’
READ MORE:
—What would it have taken for Robert Kraft to keep Bill Belichick?
—Patriots sign wide receiver to contract for 2024
—Full Patriots draft coverage
Highsmith, 58, has worked alongside current Patriots director of scouting Eliot Wolf in the past. The two came up together in the Green Bay Packers organization from 2012 to 2017, although Highsmith’s time with the Packers began in their scouting department in 1999. Then they both left Green Bay for the Cleveland Browns in 2018. For the two years both were in Cleveland, Wolf was the assistant general manager and Highsmith was the vice president of player personnel.
This isn’t the first hire the Patriots have made who has a prior connection to Wolf. Offensive coaches Alex Van Pelt and Ben McAdoo worked with him in Green Bay, as did new defensive line coach Jerry Montgomery.
After his tenure with the Browns ended in 2019, Highsmith joined the Seattle Seahawks for three years working in their personnel department. He then spent the last two years at his alma mater, the University of Miami, where he was the ‘general manager of football operations.’
According to The Athletic, in that role Highsmith “spent a lot of time evaluating transfer prospects and working with [head coach Mario] Cristobal on administrative functions including the budget, culture building and working with staffers both on and off the field.” The U signed back-to-back top-10 recruiting classes during his time with the program.
Coming from Miami, there’s bound to be people now linking the Patriots and the Hurricanes’ prospects in this year’s draft. That group includes safety Kamren Kinchens (projected top-50 pick), defensive lineman Leonard Taylor (projected second-round pick), safety James Williams (Day 3), and guard Javion Cohen (Day 3).
Highsmith played his college football at Miami, where he led the team in rushing during their 1983 national championship season. He was the third-overall pick in the 1987 NFL Draft by the Houston Oilers, and played six seasons in the NFL.
Read more…
Examining initial comments from the Patriots' front office on the 2024 NFL Draft
L-R: LSU QB Jayden Daniels, Ohio State WR Marvin Harrison Jr. Who will the Patriots front office target?(USA Today)
With the departure of Bill Belichick, the leadup to the NFL Draft for the New England Patriots this year represents a whole new era. In the past, there were two decades of trends from Belichick’s front office to serve as a guide when analyzing the draft from a Patriots lens. Now, that process starts over.
Forget the trends themselves for a second – we still don’t really know who it will be creating the blueprint for the new era. From ownership on down the team has stressed a collaborative approach. There’s nothing wrong with that, but somebody will ultimately have to have ‘final say‘ when it’s time to make a decision.
READ MORE:
—2024 NFL Draft quarterback big board
—Initial reactions and immediate questions following the Patriots’ hire of Alex Van Pelt
—Patriots pre-draft meetings from the Senior Bowl
We finally got a brief glimpse into the new process on Friday, when Evan Lazar of Patriots.com posted interviews with both director of player personnel Matt Groh and college scouting director Camren Williams. Based on Groh’s comments, it sounds like the overall process may not change much, outside of who has final say.
“This is what we’ve always done here is get together as a group and talk things out,” Groh said of the ‘collaborative approach’ the front office staff is using. “So, not a whole lot has changed on our end. I’m looking forward to having the staff be a part of the evaluation process as we go through free agency and the draft.”
“It’s more just identifying good players and finding players in the right buckets and values within their skill sets and how they fit for our team,” Williams added, sharing more about how that process works. “We’ll have a coach that comes to us and says, hey, I want this and this position. These are the skills that I’m looking for. Then we can identify a list of players that we think fit that.”
Just because the process isn’t changing much doesn’t mean the approach, and ultimately the results, won’t be better. A lot of that will come down to how they view this class specifically.
While they didn’t give away the board (nor should they have), both Groh and Williams touched on some key topics about the 2024 draft process, and draft philosophy as a whole. Here’s the three quotes that stood out the most from the interviews.
