By now you’ve probably had the treat of seeing Patriots rookie Elandon Roberts run right through Joe Thomas to tackle Isaiah Crowell this past weekend. If not here it is from the end zone cam of the All-22 which really captures what a wrecking ball Roberts was.
This is the kind of thumping the Patriots have really missed since Brandon Spikes left (and then came back only to leave again). The Patriots struggles against the run last season when Dont’a Hightower was out were well-documented, yet the Patriots still did little this offseason to address their linebacker depth.
Enter the 214th overall pick in the draft. Roberts immediately showed up in preseason because he comes downhill like a runaway dump truck, destroying anything in his path. In the final preseason game, Roberts went down with what looked like a game-ending ankle injury. Yet, perhaps knowing he was on the bubble to make the team. Roberts battled through the injury and returned to lead the team with nine total tackles.
Here’s how Bill Belichick noticed Roberts and what stood out.
“I first saw him when I was watching Keenan Reynolds, the Navy quarterback. In that game Reynolds threw for 300 yards or something like that. He threw a lot of passes in the game and that was the game of his career that he threw the most so I wanted to watch that,” Belichick said. “And when I watched that I kept noticing the middle linebacker for Houston. And he made a ton of plays in that game. I don’t know how many tackles he had but they weren’t all on the option play because he blitzed, he just showed up on plays, showed up a lot. I thought he ran well. I didn’t even know who he was so I went and got the information on him and so forth. That’s when I first noticed him. I’d say in scouting him throughout his college career – good production, particularly his senior year, runs well, probably plays to or maybe a little bigger than his size. He’s got some explosion. Obviously he doesn’t have the kind of length that some players have at that position but he plays strong, he’s instinctive, he can find the ball, he runs well.”
Despite being undersized, Roberts stands out and those kind of players deserve more playing time. He’s certainly been more impressive to me on defense than Jonathan Freeny ever has. Freeny often over-pursues, struggles to get off blocks and definitely doesn’t make the kind of hits we’ve already seen a handful of times from Roberts in his brief career.
Roberts also moves well in space and has good speed in pursuit as you can see here:
With New England’s biggest AFC roadblocks being excellent running teams (Denver/Pittsburgh), you can’t understate the importance of having a player like Roberts in your bag of tricks. Will he be an every-down linebacker? Probably not this year, though his performance in the passing game was still pretty good against the Browns.
But Roberts should have a significant role in some important games down the stretch, especially when it comes time to stop LeVeon Bell and CJ Anderson.