The talk around Will Campbell has gotten loud fast, but the full picture is a little messier than the hot takes suggest.
Before the Patriots’ playoff run changed the way people looked at the 2025 team, Pro Football Focus had already put New England’s offensive line in a strong spot. PFF ranked the group of Will Campbell, Jared Wilson, Garrett Bradbury, Mike Onwenu, and Morgan Moses No. 11 overall, and much of that credit went to Campbell’s work as a rookie starter.
“Perhaps no offensive line improved more year over year than New England’s. After finishing 31st in PFF’s pass-blocking efficiency rating last season, the Patriots' offensive line tallied an 86.5 PFF pass-blocking efficiency rating this year, which ranked seventh in the NFL.
The unit gave up just 13 sacks after allowing 33 last season,” PFF’s Zoltán Buday wrote. “That had a lot to do with first-round pick Will Campbell. The LSU product gave up pressure on 6.3% of pass plays - the 12th-best rate among 32 qualifying left tackles.”
Then the postseason hit, and the conversation flipped almost overnight. Drake Maye was suddenly being tied to the NFL’s easiest schedule. Campbell, meanwhile, was being pushed into the “move him to guard” bucket.
That noise only grew after the Patriots traded up in the first round of April’s draft to take Caleb Lomu, the Utah left tackle. Even now, some analysts are ready to bury Campbell after the rough playoff stretch. Sharp Football’s staff, for example, ranked New England’s reshaped line 15th heading into 2026, with Wilson at center, Alijah Vera-Tucker at left guard, and Lomu likely as the swing tackle.
“Votes for the Patriots' offensive line ranged from 11th to 23rd. Both their postseason performance and that range might be explained by a variety of opinions on left tackle Will Campbell. New England’s rookie left tackle was steady during the regular season (5.8% pressure rate allowed) but exposed against better defenses in the playoffs (12.3% pressure rate allowed)."
But that’s not the whole story, either. Campbell wasn’t healthy.
He missed just four regular-season games and came back for the playoffs with what was confirmed as a torn MCL in his right knee. He was on the field, so yes, the criticism lands.
But the injury matters, and it matters a lot.
The regular season also wasn’t some soft landing spot. New England’s schedule was favorable, sure, but it still included eight of the top 20 teams in total EPA, according to SumerSports. Campbell faced seven of them - the Browns, Saints, Bills, Falcons, Raiders, Bucs, and Steelers - and PFF charged him with four sacks and 22 total pressures allowed.
For a 21-year-old rookie, that’s a solid body of work against quality competition. He also posted clean sheets against Pittsburgh, Buffalo, New Orleans, and Tampa Bay.
The playoffs were a different story. Campbell struggled badly against Houston, where a couple of rough reps led to strip-sacks. Things unraveled again in the Super Bowl against Seattle, where he allowed eight pressures, though the Patriots’ offense as a whole could barely stay on the field until the fourth quarter.
If Campbell had only played through a healthy stretch, the alarm bells in Foxboro would make more sense. Instead, the tape has to be weighed against the torn MCL and the five weeks he spent dealing with it.
During the regular season, he showed he could sit down, anchor in pass protection, and flash as a run blocker. Those traits faded after the injury, and that’s the part getting lost in the rush to judge him entering Year 2.
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Patriots Made The O-Line Move Fans Have Been Begging For
The Patriots finally made the kind of offensive line move their fans have been waiting for, bringing in guard Alijah Vera-Tucker on a three-year, $48 million deal to help shore up a unit that came up short in the postseason. A former first-round pick by the Jets, Vera-Tucker arrives with the kind of versatility and talent New England has been lacking up front, and the hope is that he can bring some much-needed stability to a group that has been searching for it.
There is real intrigue here because the upside is obvious, but so are the questions that come with a player whose career has been interrupted by injury issues. If Vera-Tucker can stay on the field, he is expected to step in as a starter and offer help and mentorship for Will Campbell on the left side, which gives the Patriots a cleaner path toward fixing one of their biggest problems. [Read more 🡒]
Patriots Rookie Tight End Suddenly Looks Like A Real Offensive Factor
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The opening has only grown after an injury thinned the tight end room, pushing the rookie into a spot where his development matters sooner than expected. He has already shown enough in OTA and minicamp work to suggest he can mesh with Drake Maye, and the Patriots may ask him to handle more of the dirty work in the run game than originally planned as they sort out how best to use him. [Read more 🡒]
Mac Jones Was Right About Patriots But Fans Know The Other Truth
Mac Jones arrived in New England as the 15th overall pick in 2021 and looked like the Patriots had found their next long-term answer, earning a Pro Bowl nod and helping push the team back to the playoffs as a rookie. The early promise did not last, though, as the offense changed around him, the support system thinned and the quarterback who once looked settled in Foxborough was out after just two seasons.
Jones has since bounced to Jacksonville and then San Francisco, where he has rebuilt some value as a backup and, by most accounts, one of the better ones in the league. Still, the Patriots part of his story remains the most complicated, because the criticism he has carried from that era runs straight into the reality fans remember: a team that never really gave him the kind of stable structure a young quarterback needs, and a stretch in which his own play fell off hard enough to make the whole debate linger. [Read more 🡒]