KVN played about 66% of snaps while Elandon Roberts played roughly 50% and Flowers played 25%. Roberts and Van Noy both played about 25% in 2016 with McClelan, Collins and Hightower all taking more. Of course the timing of arrivals and injuries played an impact in these numbers so with Shea and Hightower hopefully back KVN should lose a lot of time.
If we get second year leaps from Langi or Flowers or with some rookie talent and I think we can hopefully field 3 linebackers including Hightower who will see higher snap counts than van noy. I think that'd help a lot with the defenses ability to cover RB's/TE's in the flat and up the field an creating negative plays. As a unit, they struggled with this even with Collins who wasn't disciplined or natural enough to consistently do either.
The aspect that's being ignored here is the ability of players to develop and improve from season-to-season and over the course of a season.
Van Noy was with the Pats for only 7 games in 2016 after the mid-season trade. While his total snaps with the Pats do represent only 24% of the Pats total defensive snaps for the 2016 season, he actually averaged 60% of the defensive snaps for those 7 games - around 80% in weeks 13, 15 & 16. In his first full season with the Pats in 2017, he's improved significantly. He averaged over 90% of the defensive snaps even when Hightower was healthy and on the field during weeks 4 thru 7.
And, despite what almost everyone seems to think, Roberts - in only his second NFL season - also improved over the course of 2017.
Marquis Flowers, who had played a grand total of 72 defensive snaps during his first three NFL seasons, played 250 of his 283 snaps on the Pats' defense after the BYE, and produced 27 total tackles and 3.5 sacks in that half-season.
Were any of these three perfect or even consistently very good? Hell, no! But all were definitely trending upward as the season progressed, and all now have much more significant experience to build on in 2018. Folks who only see the negative plays and/or those who pre-emptively and prejudicially and who rank their places on some fanciful depth chart for 2018 based on what they did two seasons ago and/or for their one last game of the 2017 season (against probably the toughest offense they faced all year), simply weren't watching how these guys actually played over the course of the entire season closely enough.
Sure, Hightower is very likely to return for 2018. Assuming that the Pats are able to re-sign Flowers, it's not at all clear what his specific role may be.
McClellin's health status is completely unknown at this point. All we have are rumors and speculation about what his injury was. Even if he's healthy enough to participate in the 2018 off-season, his roster spot is far from guaranteed now.
Langi showed some potential last pre-season, but he played only 6 defensive snaps and 12 ST snaps in the one regular-season game for which he was active - after which he was a healthy scratch for the three games before his unfortunate auto accident. Even assuming he's completely recovered, he's got a major hill to climb to carve out a defensive role for himself - or possibly even a roster spot. The same thing applies to Rivers.
Will all of Van Noy, Roberts and Flowers continue to trend upward through the 2018 off-season and Camp? We shall see. Or, at least some of us will.
