After ignoring pass-catchers for much of the 2023 NFL Draft, the Patriots grabbed a pair of wideouts in the penultimate round.
New England used the 210th overall pick in Round 6 to select Liberty slot receiver Demario Douglas. The Patriots also drafted LSU's Kayshon Boutte at No. 187.
Douglas played for the Patriots' coaching staff at the 2023 East-West Shrine Bowl. He's seriously undersized at 5-foot-8, 178 pounds but was productive last season, catching 79 passes for 993 yards and six touchdowns in 13 games.
Douglas' testing numbers in agility drills didn't meet the Patriots' usual slot receiver standards, but he ran a slick 4.44-second 40-yard dash and showed great explosiveness, testing in the 89th percentile for wideouts in the vertical jump and the 97th percentile in the broad jump, per Mockdraftable.
Here was Douglas' pre-draft scouting report on NFL.com:
Smallish slot receiver with adequate speed and quickness but inconsistent route running and ball skills. Douglas has the ability to slip press and can be a tough route-runner for defenses to read, but he needs to get better at the finer points of the craft to separate from NFL coverage. He won't be a plus ball-winner on contested catches, but he can make challenging grabs. Douglas has late-round potential but his lack of size and history of muffed punts could work against him.
Douglas was the second Shrine Bowl alum selected by the Patriots, joining fifth-round guard Atonio Mafi of UCLA. He joins a receiving corps that features JuJu Smith-Schuster, DeVante Parker, Kendrick Bourne, Tyquan Thornton, Tre Nixon, Lynn Bowden and Boutte.
There's no traditional slot receiver type in that group (Smith-Schuster, like Jakobi Meyers before him, is a bigger slot), so Douglas could fill a hole if he sticks on the roster. But as a sixth-round pick, he'll need to earn his spot.
