The NFL is a league, like most, of teams that, if they have star players, tend to win, and if not, the opposite is true. If a team has enough talented players, it will be a winning team, and if it has some star players and a large number of good players, it can be a championship contender.
The Patriots are a team in transition. Many players have been sent packing and replaced by presumably better additions, at least on paper. The rubber will meet the road beginning later in July, when training camp starts, and those players will play football for real.
One thing is certain, however: unless you have a quarterback who can do it to a great extent on his own, if your offseason is a flop, you have big problems. The Patriots' 2024 offseason, absent the drafting of Drake Maye, is a case study of an offseason that can ruin a season before a ball is even snapped. Conversely, in 2025, under Mike Vrabel, the opposite is almost certainly true.
Five Patriots predicted by Bleacher Report to be AFC East All-Stars
A divisional All-Star team doesn't exist in reality. Yet,
Bleacher Report's Matt Holder has predicted each NFL Division's pre-training camp All-Stars for 2025. Among his AFC East selections are five New England Patriots. They are Stefon Diggs and Mike Onwenu on offense and Robert Spillane, Christian Gonzalez, and Jabrill Peppers on defense. It's a decent enough sampling for a team in a major transformative stage.
Wide receiver Stefon Diggs is a former 4-time Pro Bowler, and if healthy, he can be a force. Guard Mike Onwenu is a solid guard if he's in playing shape, a big "if" for the player. Those are the only two on the Patriots' offense who made the squad. It's a light sample and doesn't show much respect for Vrabel's offensive additions. The team had better hope for more respectable results.
On defense, they did better. Free-agent linebacker signee Robert Spillane is a tackling machine who averaged more than 150 tackles in each of the last two seasons. He added a lot of big plays to those totals. He's a tone-setter and second-level leader who will likely find himself a captain for 2025, though he's new.
Cornerback Christian Gonzalez is an oft-ignored terrific corner who was a second-team All-Pro in 2024. No surprise there. Jabrill Peppers is a solid box safety. When he plays, he's a talent, but he only played in six 2024 games and logged a mere 40 tackles. If he gets back to his 2024 form, he'll be a real asset on the third level of Vrabel's defense.
Patriots who could have made the AFC East All-Star team
Several Patriots weren't included for various reasons. Quarterback Drake Maye is a breakout candidate in 2025. Yet he'll be behind MVP Josh Allen in the pecking order at QB for the foreseeable future. Pats' tight end, Hunter Henry, lost out to Buffalo's Dalton Kincaid. Henry is the Division's best tight end, and Holder missed the boat on him. He had a far better 2024 than Kincaid.
Two defensive tackles could also have been on the list. Christian Barmore, when healthy, is as good a defensive tackle as there is in the Division and beyond. Yet, health concerns derailed his 2024 season. Free agent signee Milton Williams is also a star. Williams was productive and a Super Bowl MVP candidate, but his restricted 2024 regular season snaps for the Eagles (only 48 percent) cost him a nod.
All in all, Holder did a decent job of identifying the Patriots who deserved a spot in a fictional AFC East Division's 2025 All-Star team pre-training camp, with the glaring exception of Hunter Henry. The hope is that after 2025, next season's version of this team will be flooded with additional Patriots. Vrabel aced the 2025 offseason, and producing All-Stars is one way it becomes manifest.