Can Jake Bequette, Chandler Jones Fill Elephant Role for New England Patriots?

Since Willie McGinest left for the Cleveland Browns in 2007, the New England Patriots have been trying to address the elephant in the room: the void at the "elephant" position in their defense.

They found two elephants in their war room.

The elephant role is often described as a hybrid between a defensive end and an outside linebacker. There's a requisite size that comes with the position and was exemplified by McGinest, who stood at 6'5" and 270 pounds with long arms and a lean frame.

With the selection of both Syracuse defensive end Chandler Jones and Arkansas defensive end Jake Bequette, the Patriots are finally beginning to throw some darts at the board to try and hit a bulls-eye on that position of need.

Both Jones and Bequette fit the mold of what they're looking for. Jones is 6'5" and 266 pounds, and his 35.5" long arms measured the longest of any defensive lineman at the combine. Bequette is 6'4.5" and 274 pounds, with 32" long arms, just short of the ideal length.

But as Patriots fans have learned, and as McGinest told the Boston Herald (via PatsPropaganda.com), it's much more than that.

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You have to be talented, you have to be tough, because you have to be able to take on the linemen and fullbacks and tight ends and play in the trenches vs. the run game. So you have to be sturdy and strong enough and tough enough to handle that, but you also have to be agile, and smart enough to be able to read coverages and drop back into coverages and understand different receiver sets and motions and be able to read different formations. It's not easy.

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It takes a lot to learn the position, and as such, Jones may not be ready to fill such a big role immediately.

By the summation of Greg Bedard of the Boston Globe, the return on investment may not be instantaneous.

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He'll likely be given every opportunity to be a starter, especially if Carter is not re-signed, but it may take Jones a year of seasoning to really fill a role that can be tough for a younger player to master because there's so much reading and reacting. 

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Bedard also adds that while some scouts think Jones isn't ready to be a big-time player this coming season, he could be "special" with development; because of his athleticism and size, there's room for him to grow.

As for Bequette, Bedard projects him to left end in his early attempt at the Patriots' defensive depth chart, but adds that Bequette could switch spots on his chart with Trevor Scott, whom he feels has a similar skill set.

But he told CBS Sports' Pat Kirwan it's the versatility of the players that he likes the most.

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Talkin w/ B Belichick he's definitly in to the multiple fronts in'12. Draft pics Jones, Hightower, Bequette and Wilson all play multiple spo

— Pat Kirwan (@PatKirwanCBS) April 30, 2012"

In that sense, the versatility of the draft picks in addition to that of the current core hearkens back to the 2004 defense, which was known for its stars in McGinest, Mike Vrabel, Richard Seymour and others who could all be multiple within the defense.

The versatility helps and was all but certainly the overriding theme of the draft, but it's clear that the Patriots were taking the volume approach at elephant for a reason: They're sick of the elephant in the room.

Throwing multiple darts at the board and hoping some of them hit? That's been the modus operandi at Gillette Stadium since at least 2006, the first of seven consecutive years in which the team has drafted a defensive back in one of the first two rounds of the draft.

That approach hasn't always worked, but when it has, it's paid huge dividends.They took the same approach at tight end in the 2010 draft and on the defensive line during the 2011 free-agency period. 

They have long needed to take that approach at the elephant position, too; now, with the additions of Scott, Jones and Bequette, they have multiple opportunities to find the best fit.

I hate ending articles with someone else's words, but I think Mike Dussault of PatsPropaganda.com put it best on our podcast when he called it the, "It's About Time" Draft for the Patriots.

Follow @ErikFrenz