In just a few weeks, players around the NFL will find out their fate for the 2026 season, as every team will have to make the tough decisions about who should make their official 53-man roster. The Patriots have a lot of brutal cuts ahead, particularly within their deepest positions. But they also have weak depth across the board.
That could become an underlying factor in how they decide who stays and who goes, especially on offense, and many are already predicting that some groups won't be filled with much talent this year.
ESPN's Mike Reiss recently made such a suggestion with a new roster prediction ahead of the Patriots' preseason finale against the Browns on Thursday.
Given the pool of talent the team will have to sift through, the insider could see a scenario where Mike Vrabel and Co. ultimately stick with their running back tandem of Rhamondre Stevenson and TreVeyon Henderson rather than carry a third playmaker.
Maybe the current players they have aren't deemed worthy of holding a spot on this year's roster, but relegating them to the practice squad and going into the season with just two running backs seems like a risk not worth taking.
The Patriots are not in a position to get too risky with their offensive roster
In his prediction, Reiss immediately notes that keeping only Henderson and Stevenson on the roster is a clear "unconventional approach," but he believes signing four running backs to the practice squad will help ease concerns about the risks that approach might bring.
"This is an unconventional approach to keep just Stevenson and Henderson, then load up the practice squad with any combination of Hassan Haskins, JaMycal Hasty, 2026 seventh-round pick Jam Miller and 2025 undrafted Lan Larison (and promote them for games as needed).
Of the group, Haskins' special-teams experience (449 snaps over the past two seasons) gives him an added layer of value."
While his reasoning makes sense and it's unlikely that those four players (Hassan Haskins, JaMycal Hasty, Jam Miller, and Lan Larison) will be stolen by another team at any point during the season, not having at least one more on the game day roster feels like a disaster in the making.
It would take just one injury to either Henderson or Stevenson to create a nightmare scenario for the Patriots' offense, and given how much they're likely going to lean on the run game again this year, it doesn't seem like a smart move.
They had a lot of depth issues last season, and it's still a concern going into this year. So not packing their most important groups as much as they can would be a regrettable decision, especially since a few of those running backs have already shown they can be viable options.
Whether that's something they'll consider is yet to be seen, and at the end of the day, this is just Reiss' prediction about what might happen, so it's far from being set in stone.
But we could see this come to fruition during roster cuts, and that would likely draw a strong reaction from analysts and fans already worried about a lack of depth, which even Vrabel mentioned after their latest preseason win.
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