It occurs to me that the single greatest statement of BB's draft philosophy is that he runs a complete independent scouting operation, rather than subscribing to one of the big services. IOW forget consensus rankings, forget conventional wisdom and look at the value to the Patriots.
Yes, a very important draft philosophy that often gets overlooked.
Here's another one - the earlier in the draft, the more BB prefer to draft players with the highest floor, as opposed to those with the highest ceiling. The thinking, IMO is as follows:
high floor + good coaching + good work ethic = good player, with some chance to become great, and low risk of failure.
low floor + high ceiling + good coaching = boom or bust, with some chance of coming out in the middle.
I also think that quite often, many of the high floor players tend to exhibit good work ethic while some of the high ceiling guys have gotten by on talent and may lack the necessary work ethic to become great.