Well, nothing the Pats do surprises me because they use every approach at one time or another - just ours to try to guess (mostly futile) when they will use what approach.
But when it comes to trading 2 1st round picks for 1, it would have to be somebody REALLY special and an absolute lock as a starter for them to pull the trigger. Is Landry ALL that special and guaranteed to be a starter ? We certainly can't know, but the Belichick/Pioli Patriots have an unblemished record of picking a first rounder who will start.
In addition to that, you can bet that the Patriots have the likely 1st round board pretty well analyzed. And if they think that two solid starters will be available at 20 and 24, the pure numbers tell you that it isn't a very high payoff to trade 2 for any particular one player. If you get an average of 3 starters out of each draft year (2 of which are gambles at odds from below the 1st round), and you get to keep a drafted starter for an average of 4 + years, that means that you can only fill up something like 12 and at most 15 slots of your starting roster with draft picks. Case in point - at the start of this last season, you probably had 14 starters from the draft (some counting .5 each since they all couldn't start on offense at the same time). That makes a 1st round draft slot (guaranteed starter with Patriots track record) an extremely precious commodity to provide a solid starter.
As I say, nothing the Patriots do surprises me. But it seems like the odds of trading 2 for 1 are on the very low side. Something with slightly higher odds might be trading 2 number 1s for a slightly higher 1 and a very high 2 - but the draft 'value' charts make this tough except for some unique circumstances or a 3 way deal of some kind.
