FOXBOROUGH – If it weren’t for the breeze down in Foxborough on Wednesday, it would have felt like training camp heat had already arrived.

On the field, it certainly didn’t look like training camp, though.

After a pretty uptempo, intense mandatory minicamp practice on Tuesday (by June standards with no pads of course), Wednesday was a walkthrough day. The most competitive and entertaining thing – aside from Maye-to-Brown during early periods – was team relay races that revolved around pushing a sled.

But, we’ve learned a little bit about this team throughout the last couple months. There are still plenty of questions, but there’s a certain understated swagger or confidence level that’s there. Rarely do you find a team that went to the Super Bowl feeling like it has something to prove, but that’s exactly the spot this Patriots squad is in.

Will the Vrabel stuff be a distraction? Is Will Campbell actually the left tackle of the future? Can AJ Brown’s knee hold up? Do they have anyone that can truly rush the passer? Who’s the second tight end? Can Drake Maye take another step forward? Was last year all because of the schedule?

Quite frankly, they’re all relevant questions and it’s hard to quantify, but being around this team, there’s more of ‘we’ll let our actions on the field do the talking’ approach than anything else.

Here are three things I’m absolutely sure of and three I’m still worried about as we head into the final minicamp practice on Thursday before a month off prior to training camp:

 

STONE COLD LOCKS

1. Maye-to-Brown is going to be fun – Look, it’s been labeled as a ‘passing camp’ for a reason and we haven’t seen very much of these two guys together, but in some of the ‘live’ snippets we’ve seen or indy periods where Maye is throwing to receivers, this could be really, really fun. Maye acknowledged it’s “hard not to get excited” on Wednesday and you see why. He’s just such a big target with a massive catch radius. The day they traded for Brown, I told John on The New England Football Show that this offense COULD be deeper than the 2007 one was. I know they have to go out and play well, but as of June 10, I will let my mind wander when it comes to the numbers No. 10 and No. 1 can put up together.

2. Mike Vrabel will use all of those questions as motivation – I get the feeling I had watching the original Spygate team in the sense that, there’s been so much noise around them this offseason, they’ll compartmentalize it, use it and ultimately be better off for it. That 2007 team wasn’t just really good, they played pissed off every single week. We saw last year at times Vrabel wasn’t afraid to use certain things (Buffalo’s home streak, the Miami heat, the atmosphere in Denver leading to Road Warriors becoming a national thing, etc.) to motivate his guys. Should you need motivation as an NFL player? No, but it can’t hurt to have it in your pocket. On the flip side, his guys have stood behind him all offseason and have their own questions (see above) to answer. This team already has plenty to play for in 2026.

3. Josh McDaniels is going to love his job – Assuming health, like I said, I believe this offense could be deeper than the 2007 one. Now, before anyone jumps down my throat, deeper does not mean better (although, it’s possible). I just think McDaniels has so many weapons at his disposal at so many different positions that his creativity and play-calling can shine through.

 

EHH, NOT SO SURE

1. Who’s getting to the QB? – They signed Dre’ Mont Jones, but there’s really not much else. I completely acknowledge that talking about pass rushing during OTAs is probably pretty dumb, but I’m sort of just projecting ahead and honestly, this might be a fun camp for fans to go too. Drake might have plenty of time to sling it all over the practice fields (assuming the O-line is still a question too). Joey Bosa is still out there, just saying…

2. Tight ends are REALLY thin – If Hunter Henry goes down for any prolonged period of time, they are screwed. I will say, watching Henry up close for a couple minutes on Wednesday, he looks bigger and more cut and he still has great hands. I would love to see a bit of a resurgence out of him from a production standpoint, but behind him it’s alarming. Rookie Eli Raridon certainly looks the part and now has an opening with Julian Hill going down, but he hasn’t been explosive or anything like that. Again, I understand we need to take everything into perspective with no pads on, but Vrabel even acknowledged it’s an area the team probably needs to add to before training camp.

“Just from a numbers standpoint at camp, I think that is somewhere where we will probably have to evaluate the numbers,” he said. “I mean, there are 90, 91 guys on every team, so we will just have to take a look at that. But I would say that is probably somewhere where we would have to address.”

1. The O-line – I mean, this is pretty obvious. Was it a complete disaster last year? No, of course not, they won 17 games. But, that was up until the biggest game where it was an absolute nightmare. Now, if Alijah Vera Tucker is healthy all year and Morgan Moses can give you at least 13-14 games, I think they’ll be fine and actually pretty damn good. Whether it’s Will Campbell or Caleb Lomu at left tackle (I feel like we could see it earlier than later in the regular season), if all those guys can play well and Jared Wilson is as comfortable as he’s told us he is at center, it’s not an issue. However, until we do see that and see how it looks when Christian Barmore and Milton Williams are trying to get after them, it’s hard for me to full have faith in the unit yet.