INDIANAPOLIS — Here’s a reminder for anyone focused on their team possibly trading up to the No. 3 overall pick in the NFL Draft: The New England Patriots, who hold that pick, desperately need a quarterback.

They need a quarterback as badly as any team in the league.

So if there is a third highly-coveted QB in this class – a player other teams are clamoring to acquire – the Patriots need that player just as much if not more. Sure, they could go the veteran trade route or make a free agent signing instead – the Justin Fields, Russell Wilson or Tyrod Taylor options, for instance.

A king’s ransom could tempt personnel director Eliot Wolf to move down the board and rebuild key parts of this roster with cost-controlled youth.

Still, this is owner Robert Kraft’s first NFL Draft since parting ways with Bill Belichick. This is Kraft’s opportunity to pen the next chapter of his impressive legacy with the selection of a player who could become New England’s next great QB.

This is a chance to make a franchise-redefining selection. It’s hard imagine he would pass that up.

A Wednesday report by NFL Network that Belichick loved Heisman-winning LSU quarterback Jayden Daniels was noteworthy. It confirmed the Patriots’ six-time Super Bowl winning coach was eyeballing college football’s best 2023 QB while preparing to pick at the top of this spring’s draft.

But this is Kraft’s team. And now, it is his team without Belichick, who will no longer be making the picks for the Pats. It is Kraft’s team without Belichick coming off an exhausting and tiresome tug of war between the owner and former coach over former first-round QB pick Mac Jones, as well.

All of that toiling did no one in Foxborough any good. In many ways, it only delayed the inevitable.

Of course, this does not mean that the Giants, Falcons, Vikings, Broncos and Raiders shouldn’t call Wolf and the Patriots to make an offer.

As Giants GM Joe Schoen said Tuesday in Indianapolis, some teams need until late March or early April to gain clarity on their own rosters – through the first wave of free agency – and on the prospects they’ll have a chance to select.

Behind the Chicago Bears at No. 1 and the Washington Commanders at No. 2, though – teams that are both expected to select quarterbacks – it is extremely difficult to believe the Patriots won’t also go QB in that spot.

Jerod Mayo is the new head coach, and Wolf is running the draft. But all eyes in New England now are on how Kraft will pivot off the greatest coach of all time.

Finding the next Tom Brady in the sixth round would be nice, of course. But there’s a better chance of hitting on one in round one.

• The Patriots have an offer on the table to impending free-agent safety Kyle Dugger, a source confirmed to the Boston Herald.

Dugger is set to hit free agency when the new NFL league year starts on March 13 at 4 p.m. Other teams can begin engaging his agents in contract talks starting on March 11, when the league’s legal tampering period begins.

Dugger and offensive lineman Mike Onwenu are candidates to receive the franchise or transition tag before the March 5 deadline, though new head coach Jerod Mayo told reporters this week that the team would prefer to reach a longer-term agreement.

Dugger is one of the top free-agent safeties set to hit the open market. The transition tag would cost the Patriots nearly $14 million, while the franchise tag is just over $17 million.

STEELERS: Bill Hillgrove is retiring as the play-by-play voice of the Pittsburgh Steelers after three decades on the job.

The team made the announcement on Thursday, though the 84-year-old Hillgrove will continue to be on the call for the University of Pittsburgh football and men’s basketball teams.

Hillgrove replaced Jack Fleming as the team’s play-by-play voice in 1994 and was there for every major moment in franchise history over the last 30 years, including Super Bowl titles after the 2005 and 2008 seasons.

COWBOYS: A judge has upheld a decision requiring Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones to take a paternity test as part of a legal dispute with a 27-year-old woman who claims the billionaire is her biological father.

A Texas judge on Wednesday rejected an appeal from Jones of a 2022 ruling in a paternity case brought by Alexandra Davis, who previously alleged in a separate lawsuit she was conceived from a relationship Jones had with her mother in the mid-1990s.

Attorneys for Jones are challenging the constitutionality of the Texas law that would compel genetic testing of Jones.

In March 2022, Davis sued Jones in Dallas County, asking a judge to void a legal agreement she said her mother, Cynthia Davis, reached with Jones two years after she was born. The 1998 settlement allegedly said Jones would support them financially as long as they didn’t publicly say he was Alexandra’s father – something the married owner of the Cowboys has denied.