{"id":815949,"date":"2026-03-16T22:04:17","date_gmt":"2026-03-16T22:04:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/815949\/"},"modified":"2026-03-16T22:04:17","modified_gmt":"2026-03-16T22:04:17","slug":"what-signing-niko-lalos-means-for-the-patriots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/815949\/","title":{"rendered":"What signing Niko Lalos means for the Patriots"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Let\u2019s break down what the moves mean for the team from a big-picture perspective.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">After being selected in the seventh-round of the 2025 NFL Draft, Julian Ashby went on to handle long snapping duties for all 21 games for the Patriots in his rookie season \u2014 where he logged 3.5 tackles in coverage. Ashby will now face direct competition against Lalos, who does only have six games of experience back from 2020.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">The snappers come in different molds, as the athletic Ashby stands 6-foot-1, 231 pounds. As a converted defensive end, Lalos is listed at 6-foot-5, 269 pounds. He remains an impressive athlete at that size.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">As Lalos spent most of his football career with the New Orleans Saints and New York Giants, he also played for the Seattle Sea Dragons of the XFL from 2023 to 2024. New England has not been shy of finding talent across different leagues to help fill out their roster. That included signing offensive tackle Yasir Durant and running back Jashaun Corbin out of the UFL this past season.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">With the second week of free agency kicked off, the signing of Lalos puts the Patriots current roster at 71 players. The Patriots can roster up to 90 players in the offseason \u2014 with an exception for 91 with a player in the International Player Pathway program, which New England used last season.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">The majority of those spots are expected to be filled in April with 11 current draft picks and undrafted free agency.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Let\u2019s break down what the moves mean for the team from a big-picture perspective. After being selected in&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":815950,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2050],"tags":[7,1167,249,52640,57412,728,13788,2326,2094,6,208],"class_list":{"0":"post-815949","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-england-patriots","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-new-england","10":"tag-new-england-patriots","11":"tag-new-england-patriots-analysis","12":"tag-new-england-patriots-free-agency","13":"tag-new-england-patriots-roster","14":"tag-new-england-patriots-salary-cap","15":"tag-newengland","16":"tag-newenglandpatriots","17":"tag-nfl","18":"tag-patriots"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116241122821501238","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/815949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=815949"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/815949\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/815950"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=815949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=815949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=815949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}