I usually don't indulge in "what if?" speculation, but as I said, I'm bored.
If Goodell hadn't taken away the #31 pick the Pats would have gone into 2007 with picks #7, 31, 63, 70, 79 and 95 in the first 3 rounds (the ast 4 picks became 62, 69, 78 and 94 after #31 was voided). That's approximately 3000 points, or the value of the number 1 pick. With 3 third round picks the Pats had tons of ammo to trade up, and with 3 picks clustered in the late 2nd/early-mid 3rd round the Pats could move around and take their pick of players.
Taking away #31 messed up a lot of things. But even without that pick, the Pats still had a lot of ammo. 62, 69, 78 and 94 had a combined value of 857 points, or about the value of the #20 pick overall. The Pats ended up trading away 69 to San Diego for what turned out to be the #48 pick in 2009 (which he subsequently traded up to Oakland for Ron Brace). And they used #62 on Terrance Wheatley, #78 on Shawne Crabell, and #94 on Kevin O'Connell. So they basically got Wheatley, Crabell, O'Connell and Brace out of 4 "day 2" picks. What an incredible waste.
The Pats could easily have still done the SD trade with 69 and kept the 78 pick and used 62+94 to trade up to the 48-50 range and targeted someone like Campbell or Rice. And they could have picked up Jermichael Finley (91) or Cliff Avril (92) with the #78 pick instead of Crable.
What could have been. Losing #31 hurt. But missing on 4 consecutive top-100 picks after it hurt even more.