Aaron Schatz: Patriots’ Road to Super Bowl Contention Hinges on Young Talent
On the Toucher & Hardy morning show, Aaron Schatz from FTM Fantasy discussed the New England Patriots’ future. He highlighted the potential of the team’s recent draft picks, especially Christian Gonzalez and their third overall pick. Schatz emphasized that if these players develop well over the next couple of years, the Patriots could have a strong core of talent. However, it’s still uncertain how these players will perform. He also mentioned that having the best young talent doesn’t immediately make a team a Super Bowl contender, but it does set up a promising future.
TRANSCRIPT:
Fred Toucher: Where do they stand? What hope do you have when you look at this team? Like you say, the Lions should have been in the Super Bowl. The Texans made the playoffs and made some noise. How far away are the Patriots, in your opinion?
Aaron Schatz: Yeah, I mean, the hope is in the last two drafts, right? They had the third pick and took the guy most people felt was the third-best quarterback prospect, which was the right thing to do. Now we just have to see how he develops. People like this year’s draft, people like Christian Gonzalez, and people liked last year’s draft. So, you know, they’re a year or two away from those players hopefully maturing and being really good. But we don’t know yet. We don’t know yet what Drake Maye will be.
Hardy: Play this out over the course of a couple of years. You mentioned this in the article: it doesn’t mean you have to be a Super Bowl contender to make this list. It’s just the best talent under 25, the best young talent. But what does that mean? How many years down the road could something like this and a high ranking like this work itself out?
Aaron Schatz: To me, it means, OK, now you’re a Super Bowl contender because you are the team right now in 2024 with the best young talent. Right. I’ll say again, you don’t have to have great young talent to be a Super Bowl contender. I put Miami last on this list, and that’s partially because if you talk about under-25 talent, they just happen to have a lot of guys who are exactly 25. But what you want is the core of your team to be guys in their third and fourth years. So what you’re talking about for the Patriots is in about two years, these guys should be at their peak, still under rookie contracts. If Maye develops, if Christian Gonzalez is what we think he can be, if they draft well next year too, then they’ll have a really good core of talent in two years.
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