What now? After losing Tom Brady to free agency, how will the Patriots try to cope through the draft?
Will they add a quarterback themselves? Load up defensively to win low-scoring affairs? In this, our first seven-round Patriots-specific mock draft of the year, we're going to give the next quarterback in town — whoever that is — all kinds of help.
Some kind of sick joke? Nope.
But isn't that why Brady was getting fed up in New England in the first place, that he wasn't getting the help he needed offensively?
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Well, partly. But they've drafted offense early for years now (N'Keal Harry, Isaiah Wynn, Sony Michel), and yet the Patriots are where they are. They still need help.
They're a team that'll go into the season with a new quarterback, a 34-year-old No. 1 receiver and a 30-year-old No. 2 going into the final year of his contract. They're a team that last year had the least-productive group of tight ends in the league. They're an offense that simply did not appear to have enough speed in 2019.
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Can the Patriots address all of those things come the draft? Maybe. Let's figure it out, with the help of the mock draft simulator over at The Draft Network. Here's how things went for Brady's former club...