How will Jerod Mayo look in a New England Patriots uniform? I don’t know. You don’t know. The talking heads don’t know. Your uncle who knows a guy who knows the equipment manager at Tennessee doesn’t know. Even Bill Belichick and Scott Pioli don’t know.

Oh, the video breakdown of Mayo looks good. Diagnosing a screen, pulverizing Darren McFadden in the backfield, chasing down a quarterback rolling out, dropping back into coverage, picking off a pass and taking it back to the house. Physical, fast, smart, versatile. He looks real good.

But Andy Katzenmoyer’s highlight film looked fantastic, too. And I think I speak on behalf of all Patriots fans when I say I really, really, really don’t want Jerod Mayo to be the next Andy Katzenmoyer. I’d rather Vernon Gholston be the next Andy Katzenmoyer.

It took me and a few other Patriot fans a minute to pick ourselves up off the floor when we heard Belichick and Pioli had selected a linebacker so high. No one can argue the need to get younger and more athletic at that position. But drafting for need hasn’t been a high priority for “Belioli” in the past. Their history has been to fill needs, particularly at linebacker, through free agency and draft for value.

Dealing out of the No. 7 spot with New Orleans to move three spots down and get an extra third round pick in return was right out of the Belioli playbook. That gives the Patriots three third round picks to play with today, which translates into lots of trading leverage. But the bottom line is they got the extra pick, still got the guy they coveted and saved themselves a few million dollars in rookie salary in the process.

Mayo played outside and inside in college, so there is no telling right now where he projects in the Patriots’ system. Belichick wasn’t telling the press on Saturday, and I don’t think he knows for sure himself. I’d just as soon he keep an open mind going into training camp. He now has four guys who have recently played both inside and outside – Mayo, Mike Vrabel, Adalius Thomas and free agent signee Victor Hobson. Vrabel and Thomas have both had their biggest impact on the outside. Tedy Bruschi and Junior Seau, if he comes back, are strictly inside options.

All that any of us know is that the Patriots just got younger at a position they needed to get younger. Tomorrow, the so-called experts will purport soothsaying capabilities and issue those silly draft report cards. Someone, I think it was Sports Illustrated’s Peter King, recently wrote that those report cards are the equivalent of a college giving a student a grade at freshman orientation. It’s a pointless exercise.

And if a buddy asks you how you think the Patriots or some other team did, by all means tell him what you liked or didn’t like about their draft. But don’t act like you have any idea what any of these players are going to be like a year or five years from now. As Jim Mora once said, “You think you know, but you don’t know.”

I’m content to just stick with what I do know after spending far too much of a beautiful Saturday afternoon indoors:

• that for a draft that held the promise of a lot of intrigue a week ago, this wasn’t the most heart-pounding Saturday afternoon I’ve ever spent. What with the Long and Long selections already confirmed by media by early afternoon, and with the next four picks pretty much falling into their expected order, things didn’t really start to get interesting until the Patriots and Saints set off a flurry of first round trades.

• that the Falcons will want Michael Vick back when they find out Matt Ryan knits sweaters for his dogs.

• that New York Jets fans have a lot of nerve lecturing Bill Belichick or anyone else about class.

• that as much enjoyment as I derived in watching the Oakland Raiders rip the heart out of the Jets’ fans by selecting Darren McFadden, it likely diminished the return the Patriots got for the No. 7 pick.

• that McFadden’s family will fit right in with Raider Nation.

• that Mel Kiper has grown to look less like Rosie the Bounty towel lady as he’s aged.

• that at precisely 3:35 p.m., I was surfing the net and discovered NFL Network’s live streaming of the draft, thereby saving me over four hours of suffering Chris Berman. I haven’t been this excited about stumbling upon something on the web since Hulu.

• that, in honor of the NFL’s long overdue move to cut the time for first round selections from 15 to 10 minutes, it’s important that I cut the length of this column by 33 percent.