For a team that’s in the middle of a significant rebuild, it looks like one key Patriots personnel executive may not be a part of things moving forward.
According to ESPN’s Mike Reiss, New England Patriots director of pro personnel Patrick Stewart has accepted a position with the University of Nebraska, with Stewart joining the school as its new general manager.
He’ll join former Panthers coach Matt Rhule in trying to build a Cornhuskers’ football program that finished 7-6 in Rhule’s second season as the school’s head coach.
Stewart started his career working in the college ranks before joining the Patriots as a scouting assistant back in 2007. He spent 10 seasons with the team before joining Philadelphia in the 2018 offseason as a national scout, where he worked for two seasons, followed by three seasons with the Panthers.
He’s been here in New England since returning in 2023, but Stewart has familiarity with Rhule. The two worked together in Carolina before Rhule was fired during the 2022 season, with Stewart being let go the following February after the Panthers turned over the personnel department. They also were employed together at both Western Carolina and Temple back in the early days of their respective careers.
Stewart originally began his career at Mike Vrabel’s alma mater, Ohio State, where he worked from 2000-04. He’s obviously come a long way since then, and this opportunity is definitely a significant step forward for him. With all the changes to college football, the general manager position is becoming a more prominent role at that level, given the challenges that are arising thanks to changes in both compliance and recruitment when it comes to college athletes.
In the meantime, the Patriots will now have to decide who might step into Stewart’s role. The other question could also be, given Vrabel’s arrival and the addition of Ryan Cowden, whether or not we could potentially see additional changes down the road in the front office depending on how things go for New England, both in free agency and the upcoming NFL Draft.
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Ian Logue is a Seacoast native and owner and senior writer for PatsFans.com, an independent media site covering the New England Patriots and has been running this site in one form or another since 1997.
