{"id":873919,"date":"2026-04-24T23:45:35","date_gmt":"2026-04-24T23:45:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/873919\/"},"modified":"2026-04-24T23:45:35","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T23:45:35","slug":"patriots-draft-grades-for-2026-first-round-pick-caleb-lomu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/873919\/","title":{"rendered":"Patriots draft grades for 2026 first-round pick Caleb Lomu"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup _1teeyfa8 ls9zuh1\">The Patriots had a glaring need at offensive tackle, a premium position, and were able to land one of the top seven in this draft class with their first pick. The expectation in Foxboro was that they\u2019d be out of luck on the tackle front, so kudos to them for trading up to get the last tackle standing.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup _1teeyfa8 ls9zuh1\">A 21-year-old with room to grow &#8212; both physically and as a finisher &#8212; Lomu will need some time to develop, but he\u2019ll get exactly that with Morgan Moses and Will Campbell projected to start.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup _1teeyfa8 ls9zuh1\">Had the Patriots lucked into Clemson\u2019s Blake Miller or Arizona State\u2019s Max Iheanachor, this would be a straight \u201cA,\u201d but Lomu\u2019s rare physical skill set and the scarcity of the position he plays makes this about as ideal a pick as New England could\u2019ve made with the way the board fell.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Patriots had a glaring need at offensive tackle, a premium position, and were able to land one&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":873920,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2050],"tags":[7,1167,249,727,1095,2326,2094,6,208],"class_list":{"0":"post-873919","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-draft","12":"tag-new-england-patriots-opinion","13":"tag-newengland","14":"tag-newenglandpatriots","15":"tag-nfl","16":"tag-patriots"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116462349435519428","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/873919","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=873919"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/873919\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/873920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=873919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=873919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=873919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}