Patriots turned down offers from Bears and another team for pick they used on TreVeyon Henderson
New England selected Henderson with the 38th overall pick.
Patriots executive vice president of player personnel Eliot Wolf has previously admitted that the team had a debate over which prospect to select with their second-round pick in the 2025 NFL Draft.
It turns out there was another thing that needed to be settled with that pick.
Multiple teams made trade offers to New England for the 38th overall pick in the 2025 NFL Draft, a scene from the first episode of the Patriots’ docuseries “Forged in Foxborough” showed. The Patriots wound up staying put and using the pick on Ohio State running back TreVeyon Henderson.
As the Patriots took Henderson, “Forged in Foxborough” seems to imply that at least one of the teams looking to trade up for the 38th pick was interested in the running back, too. The Bears offered the Patriots the 39th overall pick and a seventh-round selection to get the 38th pick. Chicago had been rumored to be interested in selecting a running back with one of its first few picks in the 2025 draft.
After getting the phone call from the Bears, the Patriots received another offer for the 38th pick. A team that wasn’t identified, but was presumably the Texans, offered the Patriots the 58th and 79th overall picks in the 2025 NFL Draft, along with a third-rounder in the 2026 NFL Draft.
There seemed to be more deliberation after the second offer than the first, with those picks being held by Houston at the time New England was on the clock with the 38th overall pick.
“Who do we feel better about at No. 69?” Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel asked Wolf, referring to the team’s third-round pick. “You know what I mean? Maybe one of the receivers we like? Or Henderson?”
After the second offer came in, Patriots vice president of player personnel Ryan Cowden essentially laid out the two scenarios.
“It goes back to what do we want to go with: Those 20 players or the guy we think has the biggest impact?” Cowden said.
Cowden later added that he thinks “it’s worth doing,” presumably speaking about the Patriots drafting Henderson as the rest of the agreed in unison.
Following Day 2 of the draft, Wolf shared that the Patriots had received offers for the pick they used on Henderson.
“Some teams were calling, talking about moving up,” Wolf told reporters on why the Patriots used up most of their time on the clock before selecting Henderson. “Ultimately, we didn’t feel that the value that was being offered to us was worth possibly losing out on TreVeyon, so we just ended up sending the pick in and getting him on the phone with about 58 seconds left there.”
The first episode of “Forged in Foxborough” didn’t show the debate that Wolf claimed took place in the Patriots’ war room over which prospect they wanted to use with the 38th overall pick. However, it’s been reported that Arizona offensive lineman Jonah Savaiinaea, who was taken by the Dolphins with the 37th pick, was the other player the Patriots were interested in using the 38th pick on.
“I think it was a really good step in the right direction just for us working together in our relationship as co-workers because we have to have productive disagreements for this to work,” Wolf said of the internal debate the team had before selecting Henderson. “We can’t just agree on everything; we can’t just acquiesce to each other on something, so I think it was really productive from that standpoint.”
Beyond the behind-the-scenes look of how the team handled the 2025 NFL Draft, the 73-minute-long premier episode of “Forged in Foxborough” shows Vrabel’s opening message to the team at the start of offseason workouts, how they scouted ahead of the draft, and more.
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