{"id":853557,"date":"2026-04-04T16:51:17","date_gmt":"2026-04-04T16:51:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/853557\/"},"modified":"2026-04-04T16:51:17","modified_gmt":"2026-04-04T16:51:17","slug":"patriots-predicted-to-draft-team-leader-to-shore-up-defense","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/853557\/","title":{"rendered":"Patriots Predicted To Draft &#8216;Team Leader&#8217; To Shore Up Defense"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/nesn.com\/new-england-patriots\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">New England Patriots<\/a> made it all the way to the Super Bowl last season, and the team is looking to build off that.<\/p>\n<p>New England could go in a couple of different directions with the 31st overall pick in the 2026 NFL Draft. The Patriots have been linked to drafting a couple of different positions, but the team could very well just take the best player available.<\/p>\n<p>Ahead of the NFL Draft later this month, NFL <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nfl.com\/news\/five-round-2026-nfl-mock-draft-four-trades-two-qbs-send-jolt-through-round-1\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">analyst Chad Reuter of NFL.com predicts<\/a> the Patriots will select Georgia Bulldogs linebacker CJ Allen at 31.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe Patriots lock up a team leader in the middle of their defense,\u201d Reuter wrote in an article published on Friday. \u201cAllen\u2019s film shows he can reach ball carriers when they&#8217;re in his sights.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Allen spent three years at Georgia and is a tackling machine. Last season with the Bulldogs, he recorded 88 tackles, four pass defenses, 3.5 sacks, and two forced fumbles as he was a wrecking ball on defense.<\/p>\n<p>Allen can come in and be an immediate starter for the Patriots and help shore up the defense. He can also help be a leader on defense and project to be someone who can run the defense and call the plays.<\/p>\n<p>The Patriots have 11 picks in the 2026 NFL Draft. The Draft is set to take place on April 23-25 in Pittsburgh.<\/p>\n<p>More NFL:\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The New England Patriots made it all the way to the Super Bowl last season, and the team&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":853558,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2050],"tags":[7,1167,249,2326,2094,6,208],"class_list":{"0":"post-853557","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-newengland","12":"tag-newenglandpatriots","13":"tag-nfl","14":"tag-patriots"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116347479563523783","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/853557","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=853557"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/853557\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/853558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=853557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=853557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=853557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}