[gully]

"But NE doesn't like to give big money to rookies, and they seem to like to stockpile picks, not give them up."

"I don't see NE making the switch with us they like stockpileing picks.Look at their history of draft day trades."

"They trade down, not up. Good thinking (in terms of trading down and stocking up more picks) but this trade would not happen."

I think what's missing here is that the Pats have 12 picks, and a good team that went 11-5. Stockpiling picks is done precisely to move up to select the players you want. I've guessed in another post that they'd trade the skins for the 13th pick if Maualuga was still available - it's a long shot but I think he'd be perfect for them.

The point is that the Pats don't actually want a draft class of 12 kids, they wouldn't be able to a large fraction of them. They are the type of team, however, to trade picks for next years picks.