PATRIOTS TRAINING CAMP 2026 Patriots Training Camp - Day 20

[OldEngland]

The question is, why did all the draft experts miss utterly on this guy?

3 star recruit out of high school. He was a Freshman All-American at Kansas, then had a dispute with a coach so left, and went to Northwestern A&T for 3 years, he redshirted then was All-CCA for 2 years. Before transferring to Wake Forest and was 3rd team ACC. He wasn't a combine invite, and only had 3 teams bring him in for a visit.

So older prospect at 24, with an atypical college journey, no combine invite, or bowl invites like east-west, shrine or senior bowls. He had less exposure than many prospects, but good size and athletism numbers.

The Pats CB coach Justin Hamilton knew him. He tried to recruit him out of high school when at Virginia Tech, and Prunty is from Virginia. So the Pats had the inside track on him, and went to his pro-day and brought him in for a visit.

 

[n1997y]

3 star recruit out of high school. He was a Freshman All-American at Kansas, then had a dispute with a coach so left, and went to Northwestern A&T for 3 years, he redshirted then was All-CCA for 2 years. Before transferring to Wake Forest and was 3rd team ACC. He wasn't a combine invite, and only had 3 teams bring him in for a visit.

So older prospect at 24, with an atypical college journey, no combine invite, or bowl invites like east-west, shrine or senior bowls. He had less exposure than many prospects, but good size and athletism numbers.

The Pats CB coach Justin Hamilton knew him. He tried to recruit him out of high school when at Virginia Tech, and Prunty is from Virginia. So the Pats had the inside track on him, and went to his pro-day and brought him in for a visit.

Good info, thanks. Seems like maybe dedicating some resources to researching and tracking players with non traditional journeys might return good value.

 

[n1997y]

Another take from NFL Network. Judy Battista just commented that after attending both the Colts and Eagles joint practices with the Patriots that it was clear that AJ Brown is the best wide receiver on the field “regardless of who is the other team”.

Replay of Sal Pal interview coming up soon. I expect they’ll be getting a lot of mileage out of it.

NFL Network had Sal Pal on, interviewing AJ after practice. Sal opened by commenting about how the Pats called Brown’s number on the very first play, and asking if he was held? AJ chuckled and muttered “maybe a little”. They ran several angles on the replay, some clearly showing a grab of Brown’s belt to stay close going downfield. Unclear it would’ve been called in live game action but it seemed that if it were called there’d be enough to justify it.

IIRC that was Woods, and he got completely turned the wrong way. Almost as thoroughly beaten as Cooperation DeJean was beaten by Pop Douglas on his worst rep. Of course Pop beat him on two other reps as well.

 

[patfanken]

It is funny. My Instagram has been flooded with endless reels from Eagles influencers gaslighting about AJ Brown's day. Of course they show the first play of the practice where Quinyon Mitchell covered Brown and Brown dropped the ball. Then they make is sound like AJ Brown had a horrible practice and the real star of the day was Dontayvion Wicks (they showed the one play where he ran one way and the defender ran the other at the LOS). One influencer did show the one play where Brown made a great catch, but it was from a mile away and he claimed there wasn't a better angle on it although you can see the video of that play close up multiple times in this thread.

About the AJ Brown/and the top Eagle corner play, it happened right in front of me, and I MISSED the most important part. It looked like great coverage from the CB who knocked the ball away at the last second (beautiful pass btw). What I DIDN'T see, was that with his offhand the CB had been grabbing Brown's pants for 5 yds and nearly depant'sed him. I didn't see it until I was watching NFL today and Sal Pal showed a clip of the play from behind, where you could see the hold clearly.

So even on the ONE pass that AJ didn't catch there WERE extenuating circumstances.

 

[TommyD4207]

The question is, why did all the draft experts miss utterly on this guy?

Wake Forest was on one nationally televised game last year, and they got destroyed by Florida State in that game. Hard to pop off the screen when your team gets beat 42-7.

 

[manxman2601]

OT

Three of the Ole Miss UDFAs from the last draft were allowed back to school yesterday despite having signed on with NFL teams so I thought this was quite funny.