One of the highly sought-after things to view when NFL training camp is underway on July 25th, no matter the team, is positional battles. With many players trying to earn their spot on a roster, and only so many spots on the depth chart to go around, some of the best competition you will see throughout the entire season will take place in July and August when the roster is expanded.

For the Patriots, competition at each position is something that head coach Bill Belichick has a knack for, making sure each and every player on his roster, with the exception of a handful of players (Tom Brady, Rob Gronkowski, etc.) doesn’t have any complacency with their role on the team.

On this past week's episode of The G.O.A.T. Podcast Nora Princiotti, Patriots Beat Reporter for The Boston Globe, told me what she thought the most intriguing positional battle was for the Patriots heading into training camp.

“So this is not really a position battle so much, but I'm really curious about the offensive line,” Nora said. “My expectation is that Trent Brown will get the most reps with the first team at left tackle, but I'm really curious to see if one, that's true. But then two, what does that mean for Isaiah Wynn who was playing primarily left tackle before the Patriots drafted him? He could maybe play on the right, but could also play guard, and so there's some potential for a kind of domino effect there that I'm really curious to see about how it turns out.”

These comments by Princiotti may come as a surprise to some. The expectation when a player is drafted 23rd overall is that they will head into training camp with a starting role being theirs to lose right off the bat. That at the very least is an assumption that may be the case for 31 NFL teams, but not New England. The former Bulldog will have to earn his starting role at left tackle and will have to outplay Trent Brown, who was signed in the offseason after playing three years with the San Francisco 49ers.

Later in the podcast when I asked Princiotti who she felt would the biggest surprise in training camp on the Patriots roster, she again brought up Wynn once again.

“I think in general this would be a cop-out answer because he was the first player they chose in the draft, but I'm really curious to see what happens with Isaiah Wynn,” said Nora. “I feel like I'm allowed to give that answer because my sense after he was drafted was that there was a little bit of dissatisfaction amongst Patriots fans, a little bit of confusion as well. Because you know, he's not the size that they generally go for at left tackle. That led to the questions about whether or not he was actually going to be at left tackle or at tackle at all for the Patriots. And so I think in a weird way it's like we don't totally know what we're going to see from him or even what the expectation should be.”

A change from tackle to guard would not be out of the question for Wynn. Before playing at right tackle in his final year at Georgia in 2017, Wynn had started 12 games at left guard for the Bulldogs in 2016. His versatility on the offensive line is one of the reasons why New England selected him in the first round of the 2018 NFL draft. Wynn’s versatility may bode in his favor when the positional battles are underway, but that does not mean he will be handed anything because of his pedigree in college.

Click here to listen to the full conversation I had with Nora Princiotti on The G.O.A.T. Podcast.