Adding some reporting here to how the front office is shaping up and changing with the new administration
- Sports Illustrated Albert Breer has reported that Ryan Cowden will be joining the Patriots at "de facto" number 2 to Wolf. Title will be "along the lines of VP of player personnel" (only source I've seen so far is twitter, which I don't link to)
- MassLive's Mark Daniels points out that the is an apparent demotion for Matt Groh, who Wolf has identified as his #2 a year ago
- Daniels also identifies two other key people in the front office, implying that when Vrabel talks about "Eliot and his staff" he means Wolf, Cowden, Alonzo Highsmith, and Patrick Stewart. No, not that Patrick Stewart. This Patrick Stewart.
- Wolf, as we know, came up through Green Bay on the pro personnel side (2004-2015), and then Dir of Football Ops (2015-17), and one year as Assistant GM in Cleveland (2018-19) before coming to New England in 2020
- Highsmith was a personnel executive in Green Bay (2012-17), Cleveland (2018-19), Seattle (2020-22), and University of Miami (2022-23) before Wolf brought him to New England in 2023
- Cowden started as a scouting assistant in Carolina shortly after graduating college in 2000. He then rose through the ranks for the Panthers over the next 15 years until he became Ast Director of College Scouting. In 2016 He was poached by the Titans where he was in various Executive Player Personnel roles and eventually interim GM until he and Vrabel were shown the door in 2022. Last year he was in an advisor to the GM for the Giants.
- Patrick Stewart was coaching for the football programs at Ohio State, Western Carolina, and Temple from 2000-2006. He then joined the Patriots and was a pro and college scout of increasing responsibility from 2007 to 2017. He then spent one year scouting for the Eagles (2018-19), before going to Carolina as the Director/VP of Player Personnel (2020-22). He was fired by the Panthers in 2022 when Belichick brought him back to Foxborough as the Director of Pro Personnel
- Wolf, Stewart, and Cowden are all around the same age, which is to say somewhere in their 40s; Highsmith is the graybeard
- Highsmith and Cowden have (for now) more nebulous 'advisor' roles with Stewart (head of pro personnel) and Wolf (GM responsibilities without the power/authority) somewhat clearer
- Stewart is the only one of the three that came up under Belichick. And even he has seen the insides of how things are done in Philadelphia and Carolina
- All three of the other people on "Wolf's team" have done short stints in his job. Highsmith for University of Miami, Cowden as interim GM in Tennessee, and Stewart as VP of Player Personnel in Carolina. This may not mean they are any kind of competition or that there's going to be some internal power struggle. But not only is nobody in this group doing their job for the first time, a bunch of them have done the others' jobs as well. That can be a kind of strength to a group, if they approach this in a healthy way.
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