The New England Patriots' third-round draft pick likely won't be on the field when organized team activities begin next month.
Linebacker/safety Marte Mapu, selected 76th overall Friday night, suffered a torn pectoral muscle in February while training for the draft. That injury prevented him from working out at his pro day or in private workouts with teams, and it sounds like it'll sideline him for a few more months as he begins his NFL career.
Mapu's layoff should end long before Week 1, however. The Sacramento State product said in his introductory news conference that he expects to be cleared in time for training camp.
"I will be working with the team," Mapu said. "Right now, it's feeling good. I'll be ready by training camp at the latest. We'll see what that process looks like with the team, but I know I'll be healthy, and when I'm healthy, I'm ready to go."
The Patriots faced a similar situation with last year's third-round selection, Marcus Jones, who was coming off double offseason shoulder surgery. Jones wasn't full-go until training camp but went on to carve out substantial roles on defense and offense and earned first-team All-Pro honors as a return man.
Head coach Bill Belichick referenced Jones when asked about Mapu's recovery timeline.
"We'll know a little bit more when he gets in here and starts working," Belichick said in a video conference late Friday night. "We've had other players -- Marcus Jones last year, for example -- that wasn't able to do everything but was ready to participate in training camp. Whether he's on that schedule, ahead of that schedule, I don't know. Probably somewhere in that neighborhood.
"But we'll spend more time with him when he gets here, and when he's healthy and ready to go, then we'll start to put him into the main stream of our training and eventually put him on the field. But he has to get healthy first. We know we're not quite there yet, but hopefully that'll clear up."
Mapu was the third defensive player the Patriots selected in this draft -- after Oregon cornerback Christian Gonzalez in the first round and Georgia Tech defensive end Keion White in the second -- and, once healthy, will give New England another hard hitter with positional versatility.
The Patriots announced Marte as a linebacker at the draft, but he also played safety and even some cornerback in college. He also has a different body type than most New England 'backers, checking in at an inch shorter and roughly the same weight as safety Kyle Dugger at 6-foot-3, 221 pounds. The Patriots have used Dugger, Adrian Phillips and Jabrill Peppers as safety/linebacker hybrids in recent years.
Mapu was the Defensive Player of the Year in the Big Sky Conference last season and impressed at the 2023 Senior Bowl, where his defensive coordinator was Patriots D-line coach DeMarcus Covington. New England was one of the 15 NFL teams he visited during the pre-draft process. Head coach Bill Belichick reportedly "loves" him, as does NFL Media draft analyst Daniel Jeremiah.
After declining to make any trades to move up the board Friday night, the Patriots will enter the third and final day of the draft armed with a whopping nine picks: four in Round 4, four in Round 6 and one in Round 7.
