FOXBOROUGH, Mass. -- When the New England Patriots selected safety/linebacker Marte Mapu in the third round of the 2023 draft (76th overall), it was an outside-the-box pick in the sense that Mapu didn't have a traditional position fit.
At 6-foot-3 and 230 pounds, he was lighter than most linebackers former coach Bill Belichick preferred and bigger than the safeties he generally targeted. The hope was that Mapu's movement skills and take-on ability would emerge in a "newer" role as a higher percentage of defensive snaps played in nickel personnel (five defensive backs).
Three years and three Patriots regimes later, the Mapu experiment is coming to an end, with the team informing Mapu of its plans to release him, according to league sources.
Mapu was entering the final year of his contract and scheduled to earn a base salary of $1.508 million. It's possible another team that rated him highly coming out of Sacramento State offers a conditional late-round draft pick to trade for him, but regardless, the Patriots' decision to move on reflects, in part, how they don't view his salary as commensurate with his projected 2026 role.