The Patriots addressed arguably their most pressing need not once, but twice in the 2020 NFL Draft.
New England on two separate occasions traded up in the third round to select a tight end. Bill Belichick and Co. snagged UCLA product Devin Asiasi at No. 91 overall, followed by Virginia Tech’s Dalton Keene ten picks later.
NFL draft Lance Zierlien believes Asiasi, particularly, is built for Foxboro, a notion that dawned on him in the early stages of going over the TE’s tape. Zierlien included Asiasi as one of his three favorite third-round picks from last week.
“I was only eight plays into Asiasi’s tape when I began to realize I was watching a Patriot tight end,” Zierlien wrote for NFL.com. “Asiasi has decent size and just average athleticism, according to his combine testing, but once the tape is on, he plays much bigger, faster and more fluidly than expected. He can attack all three levels of the field with good play speed (average 15.2 yards per catch) and can snare throws way outside his frame to turn an incompletion into a catch. He’s not Rob Gronkowski as a blocker, but he does have an opportunity to become Jarrett Stidham’s safety blanket in time.”
Considering how little the Patriots received from their tight end group last season, both Asiasi and Keene are primed to make immediate impacts in New England. And as Zierlien suggested, they very well could aid Stidham’s transition into the starting quarterback role.
