Patriots 'in love with' LSU OT Will Campbell entering NFL Draft night

New England appears to be zeroing in on LSU offensive lineman Will Campbell as their first-round pick Thursday night in the 2025 NFL Draft, according to multiple reports.

The Patriots, who hold the No. 4 overall pick, have been linked heavily to Tigers’ decorated left tackle throughout the process.

And franchise officials “traveled to Louisiana in recent days to visit” with the 6-foot-6, 320-pound All-American blocker, ESPN senior NFL analyst Jeremy Fowler reported Thursday afternoon.

New coach Mike Vrabel and other members of the organization are enamored with not only Campbell’s high-level athletic potential at the position, according to longtime NFL Draft analyst Todd McShay, but even more so with the character and mental components he can bring to the team.

“The stories that are now coming as it’s becoming very, very clear that New England’s taking Will Campbell, the offensive tackle from LSU at No. 4: They are satisfied that he can do the job at left tackle for them, and they are in love with the individual,” McShay said during a mock draft he released Wednesday on his “McShay Show” podcast on The Ringer. “With the football intelligence, with the recall, meetings in Dallas, private meetings, bringing him in the building, even as simple as introducing him to everyone. And walking him through all these different things and having the recall to go back and tell them exactly what they just dumped in his lap, which is a lot of information on purpose to test him — aces the test.

“Mike Vrabel is in love with this young man, according to all reports. And it’s not surprising. He needs guys that are going to understand and pick it up quickly. They’re going to do things different in New England. It’s not gonna be just like Bill Belichick, but there’s gonna be some elements of ‘We need the smartest guys in the room. We need to change game plans. We need guys that can adjust on the fly.’ And Will Campbell can do that. And, for Patriots fans out there, if Campbell is the pick, I want you to know that it is as much about trusting the human being and his football brain as it is 32 5/8-inches or 33-inch arm length. It’s about the tape as a foundation, but ‘we trust this guy, and he can help us execute what we’re trying to do.'”

#Patriots brass traveled to Louisiana in recent days to visit with LSU offensive lineman Will Campbell, per sources.

New England has been linked to the All-American tackle with its No. 4 overall pick and is doing more work on him late in the process. pic.twitter.com/r1sm3WjT73

— Jeremy Fowler (@JFowlerESPN) April 24, 2025

The former blue-chip recruit out of Neville High in Monroe earned the starting job in preseason camp as a true freshman and held it all 38 of his games during three seasons in Baton Rouge, including All-SEC selections each year and a consensus All-America junior campaign this fall.

“The biggest thing for me was come in and leave it better than I found it in the O-line room,” he said at LSU’s Pro Day less than a month ago. “That’s something that me and (offensive line) coach (Brad) Davis talked about through my recruiting process, and I feel like I did a good job of that: you know, trying to show these guys that are in the room right now the right way to go about their business on and off the field, the way to take care of themselves, the way to approach academics and really just try to set the best example that I could.”

Campbell had long been considered the top offensive line prospect — or, even most conservatively, one of the top — in the class and put together a historically elite testing performance at the NFL Combine in March in terms of his 40-yard dash (4.98 seconds), vertical jump (32 inches) and broad jump (9 feet, 5 inches) at his size.

Questions regarded his shorter arm length, measured at 32 5/8 inches at the Combine and 33 inches at Pro Day, remained as consistent a talking point as any. But Campbell repeatedly brushed off the narrative during the pre-draft process as being overblown, adding at Pro Day that the vast majority of teams with whom he had spoken had continued to project him as a left tackle at the next level.

“For two years nobody had any measurements on me and nobody said anything about my play, and now all of a sudden my arm length determines if I’m a good player or not — I think it’s BS,” Campbell said. “But any decision-makers in the NFL, they don’t really care.”

And Vrabel and the Patriots clearly have not, as Campbell appears increasingly likely headed to Foxborough, Mass.