A look at where the Patriots’ first-round selection stands after Week 8.
The New England Patriots snapped their six-game losing streak on Sunday, beating the visiting New York Jets with a final score of 25-22. As a consequence of improving to 2-6 on the year, the team now finds itself removed from the top of the draft board.
Entering Week 8, the Patriots were among four one-win teams and one of three sharing identical 1-6 records. However, with both them and the Cleveland Browns winning on Sunday the top of the 2025 NFL Draft order now looks quite different compared to a week ago.
The Patriots are now at No. 3, with the 1-7 Carolina Panthers and 1-6 Tennessee Titans both leap-frogging them.
Entering Week 8, the Patriots lead the charge among eight teams with two wins under their belts. Their strength of schedule, or lack thereof, keeps them in pole position for the moment: their opponents have won a combined 45.4 percent of their games, which allows New England to stay in third position.
This means that they are still ahead of the Jets in that regard, even though they have leap-frogged them in the AFC East standings. That is a pure formality, however: the draft order is calculated using strength of schedule for both past and future opponents, whereas the standings only look at games played. At the end of the season, those will naturally align.
Before getting too far ahead of ourselves, however, let’s take a look at what comes next for the Patriots.
This weekend, they will travel to Nashville to take on a 1-6 Titans team that has lost three straight — including by 24 and 38 points the last two weeks. This means that the game very much should be winnable for New England even if starting quarterback Drake Maye remains in concussion protocol.
Either way, the game between the Patriots and Titans has the potential to shake things up atop the draft board once again.