Let’s avoid the obvious: Yes, we know, Tom Brady and Bill Belichick are how the Patriots got here, with ‘here’ being their 8th (!!!!!!!!) consecutive AFC Championship Game appearance.

In 2014, the Patriots won the Super Bowl.  A few months later, the Patriots drafted Malcom Brown with the 32nd pick, and then hit a pair of home runs in the 4th round with DE Trey Flowers and guard Shaq Mason.  In fact, Flowers and Mason are two of the four players drafted in the 4th round or later of the 2015 Draft to have 24 points of career AV through four seasons (Minnesota’s Stefon Diggs and Tampa Bay’s Kwon Alexander are the other two).

Those three players are regular starters for the Patriots, and 3 of the 15 players to have more than 6 points of AV for the 2018 Patriots.  Of those 15 players, 10 came through the draft, but the 2015 Class is the only draft class with more than one of those players.  Four of the 15 players came from other teams, but a fifth is center David Andrews, who was an undrafted free agent signing by New England in 2015.  Andrews has been the best undrafted player from 2015, which means ignoring players that went in the first three rounds, the Patriots got 3 of the best 5 players in the 2015 draft class.  That’s pretty darn good.

New England players had 225 points of AV this year, and the two years where the team added the players responsible for most of that AV came in 2015 (40 points) and 2018 (41 points). Take a look:

As for the 2018 class, New England drafted Sony Michel in the 1st round of the 2018 Draft, but also added ex-49ers offensive lineman Trent Brown, who started every game this year at left tackle and made just $1.9M, ex-Raiders and Vikings receiver/returner Cordarrelle Patterson, and ex-Titans and Browns cornerback Jason McCourty. Based on pure volume alone, the 2018 class wins out (eight players with 1 or 2 points of AV joined New England this year), but in terms of impact, it’s hard to top the four players added in the class of 2015.