The Patriots have cap room, draft ammo, and a young core that just made a Super Bowl run — but the postseason also showed exactly where the cracks still are. If New England wants to run it back, it starts with building on their current foundation and adding talent at key positions of need.
With the 2025 season officially in the books, we now turn the page to 2026 — and another pivotal offseason for the New England Patriots as they look to build upon the foundation they laid with a Super Bowl appearance.
New England shocked the NFL world with a historically great turnaround last season, and positioned themselves for success in the coming months.
The Patriots begin the 2026 offseason with salary cap flexibility, a haul of draft assets, and aspiring youth that will continue to develop at several key positions.
Last year, New England hit home runs in free agency and the draft as Mike Vrabel re-shaped the makeup of the Patriots’ roster, with 30 new additions on the final 53-man roster and a total of 416 games played by first-year players — setting an NFL record for a team that made the Super Bowl.
Now, they look ahead to an offseason centered around supplementing their young core — and their postseason run provided a blueprint for where their focus will likely be with key positions of need.
Let’s take a look at spots New England will be looking to make more high-profile additions from now through the NFL Draft.
Edge Rusher
© David Butler II-Imagn ImagesThe Patriots re-shaped the identity of their defensive front seven with the acquisitions of Milton Williams and Robert Spillane in 2025. Against the run, New England was a top-ranked unit in the league when those two were on the field together.
They didn’t allow a 50-plus-yard running back for the first two months of the regular season, and allowed an average of just 2.8 yards per carry to running backs en route to Super Bowl LX.
On the edge, K’Lavon Chaisson landed in Foxboro on a one-year, three million dollar contract and overperformed on the deal he was given.
Chaisson finished the season with career highs across the board, including 74 pressures, 12 sacks, 18 quarterback hits, and 44 hurries including the postseason.
Now that Chaisson (26) is set to be an unrestricted free agent again, there is certainly a possibility of retaining the former first-round pick. But he’ll have much more of a market than he’s previously entertained. And the Patriots could also be in the market for an upgrade — regardless of his future status with the team.
In the 2025 regular season, New England ranked 24th in pressure rate (20.3%), 27th in total pressures (120), 26th in sacks (35), 28th in hurry rate (5.8%), and 29th in total hurries (34).
They were menacing in the postseason, but their defensive scheme shifted to a blitz-heavy approach that featured additional rushers on nearly 50% of all dropbacks — a number that’s not sustainable over the course of an entire season, and one that will open countless gaps in coverage as those rushers vacate their zones.
The Patriots saw the effectiveness of a four-man rush in each of their final three playoff games, and would benefit greatly from another edge addition to help generate pressure without bringing extra bodies on the attack.
The addition of an edge rusher (or two) via free agency and/or the NFL Draft would help solidify a long-held position of need, and change the dynamic of a pass rush that already features two prolific talents along the interior with Williams and Christian Barmore.
Offensive Line
© Eric Canha-Imagn ImagesTypically speaking, this would be a more specific position along the offensive line, rather than the group in totality. But with this one, something needs to be done — and there are multiple ways New England can go about rectifying an eyesore of a position group — from reshuffling currently rostered players to adding additional talent.
It’s easy to see why the Patriots need to make changes along the offensive line. Drake Maye was sacked 68 times last season including the playoffs, and his nearly 15% pressure rate on dropbacks in the postseason ranked 179th out of 181 teams with multiple postseason games since that data began tracking (per the 33rd Team).
New England was incapable of providing him with space to operate from the pocket, and that was independent of defensive scheme. Four-man rushes, blitzes, simulated pressures — everything gave them problems.
The Patriots were the first team in NFL history to have two rookie offensive linemen start next to each other in a Super Bowl, and they were heavily targeted by the Seattle Seahawks as their defense nullified any momentum New England hoped to establish for the vast majority of the game.
We’ll likely be diving into all of the possible combinations that the Patriots can use to shift players around in the future, but one thing is for sure: Will Campbell will remain at left tackle.
As he should.
Building around the former fourth overall pick, New England will need to make additions to both the interior and exterior of the offensive line to both improve next season and make preparations for the future.
While Campbell won't move from left tackle, there is a legitimate chance we eventually see Jared Wilson slide over to center. That's where he spent his final year at Georgia, before scoring second out of 622 center prospects from 1987-2025 in Relative Athletic Score (RAS) in the pre-draft process (9.98/10 overall RAS Score).
Morgan Moses (35) was a great, reliable addition last season — starting all 17 games for the first time since 2022 — but at the latter stages of his career, the Patriots will need to find a potential replacement for him in the not-too-distant future.
The same could be said with Garrett Bradbury (31) and Mike Onwenu (29).
Onwenu specifically is set to have a salary cap hit of $25 million in 2026 — the last year of his current contract. With no more guarantees remaining on his deal and others soon due for a payday (Christian Gonzalez, specifically, who will likely make north of $30 million annually), he could be a movable asset as New England re-shuffles the deck up front.
Wide Receiver
© Brian Fluharty-Imagn ImagesThe high level of performance the Patriots received from their receiving corps was one of the great surprises of their 2025 team.
The addition of Stefon Diggs as the squad’s number-one receiving option, paired with a big-bodied Mack Hollins, an ascending Kayshon Boutte and breakout moments from Demario Douglas and Kyle Williams gave the group an energy that hadn’t been felt in years.
Still, there are several questions that surround the room as they prepare for another run in 2026.
Maye excelled on throws of 20+ yards in the regular season, completing an absurd 28-of-35 of those attempts. Boutte was the recipient of 10 of those passes on 14 targets, with a passer rating when targeted of 153.3.
During the postseason, we saw Maye and the entire receiving corps’ averages begin to regress more toward the mean. Boutte hauled in just two of seven targets, and Hollins ended up with more production in the playoffs — catching three of five targets on 20+ yard passes with a passer rating of 143.8 when targeted.
Boutte and Douglas are both entering the final year of their rookie contracts, and will soon be due for extensions.
Even with their roles increasing in the offense last year, New England could look to upgrade rather than handing out contracts left and right. Douglas and Diggs are redundant as slot options, as Boutte, Hollins and Williams are as boundary “X” receivers.
Of the slot players, Diggs provides much more nuance to his game as a veteran receiver — becoming an elite zone-sitting threat that caught a league-best 83.3% of his targets in the 2025 regular season.
Douglas' athleticism cannot be questioned, but his awareness has been a critique since entering the league. It's a wonder if McDaniels and/or Maye trust him to read the defense and make the correct adjustments to his route consistently enough to take over that role in a more full-time capacity. His increasingly limited snap counts in the latter stages of 2025 would suggest not.
Of the X position players, Hollins showed the most versatility. He frequently moved to the Z or slot receiver role, and even as a pseudo tight end to be used as an in-line blocker in the running game.
His frame and large catch radius were used on throws over the middle of the field at a much higher rate than the others. Hollins' highest percentage of targets came on intermediate throws 10-20 yards downfield between the numbers, where he caught 12-of-16 targets for 198 yards and a passer rating when targeted of 116.1 including the postseason.
None of the four are elite options, and Williams is still mostly projection one year into his young career. Ideally, he'd eventually take over the role(s) that Hollins (33) or Diggs (33) serve — but there isn't enough of a body of work to feel comfortable moving off of either of those pieces in favor of Williams at this point.
The group’s chemistry and their play for the majority of the season were promising, but their inability to create consistent separation in the postseason revealed warts of Patriots past — inefficiencies converting on critical downs without a dependable, clear-cut number one.
With Maye still on an affordable rookie contract for at least two more years and a deep playoff push already validating his legitimacy as the team’s long-term starting quarterback, the time is now to take a big swing on a difference-maker to pair with him on the outside.
Edge rusher and offensive line still rank as more immediate priorities, but with the flexibility the Patriots have to build around Maye this offseason, a move for a more consistently dependable top receiving option is certainly not outside of the realm of possibility.
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New England has positioned themselves for success through free agency and the NFL Draft in the 2026 offseason, and created an environment that is welcoming to talent league-wide as they look to make moves.
Whether that be competing for championships, getting paid, being involved in the culture that Vrabel’s established, or playing in an offense that features Maye, there are several incentives that would attract players to come join the party in Foxboro.
We’ll be taking a closer look at some realistic (and maybe even some unrealistic, but fun!) potential additions soon, and dissecting how the organization may prioritize those positions of need coming up next.
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