I am at the belief you don’t take guards in round 1 unless they are Zach Martin or John Hannah types. Patriots got Joe Thuney in the third round and Shaq Mason in the 4th round.
they also got Mankins in the first and Froholdt, Jackson and Ohrnberger in the 4th.
when you have a statue at quarterback, having good guards should be a bit higher priority than if your QB can make plays outside the pocket. We all saw Brady’s worst games were almost always when interior pressure disrupted him. Given Jones is only marginally more mobile than Brady, and the hit rate of any mid/late round pick is low, I can understand wanting to take a guard earlier than maybe some other teams would.
not saying Strange was the right guy (or wrong guy) but the “well you can find them later in the draft” mentality doesn’t really make sense to me. That’s true of virtually every position. Take enough shots and a few will probably work out. The issue being that taking enough shots takes years of drafting and they wanted to build a quality interior line around Jones.
the All Pro guards in 2022 were drafted 35th, 14th, 16th and 78 (Thuney). Looking through the highest graded OL in the league and most of the best guards in the league are 1st/2nd round picks with a few late round/UDFA guys as you’d expect (and a number of the best guards are highly drafted tackle conversions). It’s not like the league is littered with high quality guards who come from rounds 3-7. There are some of course simply because a lot of guys get drafted and a few are going to pan out
going back to 2020 (using the “it takes a few years to figure out if a guy is good” notion), there were 17 guards drafted and only the first 3 taken have been multi-year starters (Onwenu also but many of his starts are at tackle). For 2019, 16 drafted (including Elgton Jenkins who was a center conversion) and only 5 are current starters, 4 of whom were 1st/2nd round picks (Ben Powers is the exception). It’s a devalued position but not one where it’s easy to plug and play later round picks into your lineup.
there’s an argument to be made that 1st round picks should only be spent on the most premium positions (LT, QB, EDGE, WR, CB) but relying on low value, low hit rate draft picks to fill OL holes is always high risk. It’s not easy to hide a hole on the OL the way you can at off ball LB, RB or even TE. Especially if your QB needs to be able to step up into the pocket and can’t move well.