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The thing about old souls is they’re steady. Take Will Campbell. What Campbell wants is what he’s always wanted since the ball was taken out of his hands as a young Louisiana boy playing PeeWee football because he was too big for running back, and what he will continue to want until his cleats are taken from him in the NFL. To play left tackle, win games and kick some ass. Mind you, Campbell is just 22 years old; an age most are unsure of what they want and what comes next. Campbell is calm and consistent by nature. He’s engaged to his college sweetheart. He knows wants to have kids one day. Campbell said in February he plans on spanking his kids as discipline, part of an old-time upbringing he experienced as the son of “Bull” Campbell, a farmer who played college football and met his wife, Will’s mother, Holly, in high school. Will added he’s thankful for the butt-whoopings. Perhaps he’ll feel the same one day about Super Bowl LX. The lasting memory of Campbell’s rookie season is the series of eight pressures he allowed during Seattle’s spanking of the Patriots on the game’s biggest stage. A turnstile performance with one detail lost to history: most of the hurries and hits Campbell gave up occurred in the fourth quarter with the game well out of hand. Whether fans have forgotten is immaterial to Campbell, who owned up to his poor play two days after the Super Bowl. “I have a lot of room for growth in every aspect as a player, as a leader; whether that’s strength and conditioning, pass protection, run-blocking, whatever it might be,” he said at that time. “I have (room for) growth everywhere.” This is what the Patriots need now from him. Growth. Change. The famed Year 2 leap. But unlike fellow 2025 draft picks TreVeyon Henderson, Kyle Williams and Craig Woodson, measuring Campbell’s leap won’t be quite as easy as counting yards, touchdowns and interceptions. As the old cliché goes, offensive linemen are like referees: the less you see them, the better. The trouble is, Campbell cannot escape the spotlight because he will forever share it with the man he’s protecting: Drake Maye. Even as research increasingly demonstrates sacks are a quarterback statistic rather than a function of offensive line play, Campbell will receive blame the second he’s seen standing while Maye is on the ground. Credit will also be hard to come by for an offensive line overshadowed by the MVP runner-up. Campbell knows all of this as a 2025 first-round pick now passing on lessons learned to the Patriots’ new top pick, fellow offensive tackle Caleb Lomu. Campbell was the first to text Lomu after he was selected in April. Since then, Lomu has stayed close. “(Campbell) told me the experience that he went through, what to expect with these things; being a first-round pick, being a high pick and coming out, people knowing your name, you have a lot of responsibility,” Lomu said. “It’s a lot.” One lesson? Trust yourself. “We just go out there, relax and know that you know what to do,” Lomu said. “Have confidence and just go out there and play your game.” Confidence, oddly enough, is one area teammates have noticed a difference in the self-assured Campbell since last season. “I’m not gonna say it wasn’t there, but you can definitely see confidence,” Patriots cornerback Marcus Jones said. “Whenever you end up going into Year 2, you have more confidence. You understand the game speed and everything. Then, (he’s) also being more of a commander when it comes to the offensive line, speaking a little bit more.” It’s easy enough to envision Campbell as a captain one day in New England, where he became Mike Vrabel’s first draft pick because of his talent and position, yes, but his makeup as a fierce, rugged competitor and natural leader. In college, Campbell was a first-year starter, but LSU remembers him best for becoming a captain as a sophomore and a flag bearer for everything the program represented and aspired to be. Campbell’s leadership is one of the reasons new starting left guard Alijah Vera-Tucker says he doesn’t feel like his new running mate is a second-year player. “It’s in the locker room, on the field, (his) communication, his play style. I think he’s done a great job,” Vera-Tucker said. “Obviously, he’s preparing for that Year 2 (leap), and me coming in, I could really appreciate that.” From a distance, Vera-Tucker took note of the MCL tear Campbell suffered in late November. No stranger to serious injury, Vera-Tucker understood better than most what it meant to play through something like that. Last week, the Cardinals placed rookie offensive lineman Chase Bisontis on injured reserve with an MCL tear that required surgery. Campbell, who did not undergo surgery, returned five weeks later to play on his hurt knee. He played every game from the regular-season finale through the Super Bowl, and every snap of every playoff game. “Just the fact that he was willing to grind that out, in this league, it’s rare to find players who are willing to put their body on the line for their team,” Vera-Tucker said. The MCL tear has since become a confounding variable in understanding Campbell’s rookie campaign and his projection moving forward. Was he the rookie who supplied average left tackle play before the injury? Or the player who allowed three sacks and eight pressures over the Wild Card game and divisional round? Or the left tackle who felt like himself during the AFC Championship Game and Super Bowl, yet gave up eight pressures in the biggest game of his life? Campbell admitted after the Super Bowl he was both good to play and his knee “wasn’t 100%.” Patriots executive vice president of player personnel Eliot Wolf later remarked he never saw the same player after Campbell tore the MCL. “When he came back from that injury, I personally didn’t see the same level of lower body strength that you saw before the injury. I think the film would attest to that,” Wolf said at the scouting combine. “He probably had three of his four worst games in the playoffs. Before that, I thought Will played really well all year.” In the offseason, Campbell completed a five-days-a-week rehab and trained with some of the league’s best offensive tackles at the invitation of Eagles All-Pro and two-time Super Bowl champion Lane Johnson. Their training followed public commentary from several former NFL offensive tackles who had studied Campbell’s postseason tape and believed his problems were fixable. Among them were Chiefs All-Pro Mitchell Schwartz and five-time Pro Bowler Terron Armstead, who wrote Campbell could improve the timing of his punches and his footwork against power rushes. At Johnson’s gym, Campbell also visited with Buccaneers All-Pro left tackle Tristan Wirfs and Bills standout Dion Dawkins. Together, they lifted, worked through football-specific drills and shared extensive conversations about their position and the game. Johnson visited Foxboro this week when the Eagles traveled up for a pair of joint practices and told reporters he saw a different Campbell. “You can see him just getting better. I was watching him some today. He looks thicker and bigger.” Johnson said. “He’s healed up from his knee injury.” One of Campbell’s newest teammates, Dre’Mont Jones, faced him last year during a Week 7 Patriots win at Tennessee. This summer, Jones’ commentary on Campbell’s development seemed to suggest he had a similar scouting report that the tweeting offensive tackles like Schwartz and Armstead did: the kid can be beaten with a bull rush. “He’s definitely a lot more stout,” Jones said during training camp. “He’s not as easy to push back, I guess. I mean, (that’s) not to say, he was easy before I started putting in a lot of effort, but he’s definitely become smarter, more patient with his hands.” Regarding his hands, Campbell said his punch timing is another point of emphasis. Everything is, generally, at this stage of a young player’s career, but because Campbell’s arm length can prevent him from making first contact with a defender, landing a punch when he fires is all the more critical. The danger of missing was apparent on his first rep of a 1-on-1 pass rush drill Wednesday versus Eagles defensive end Jalyx Hunt, who swiped both of Campbell’s arms to the side and bolted by him almost untouched. Campbell added he’s trying to diversify his sets in pass protection, meaning his techniques when he’s blocking edge rushers in 1-on-1 situations. As a rookie, Campbell often defaulted to the same technique, which made him more predictable. “Trying to keep people on their toes,” Campbell said. “You know, it’s a chess match between a tackle and an edge rusher. They have a plan, we have a plan, and it’s (about) who can disturb the other one’s plan. That’s just something I’m trying to do, still trying to work on, and I’ve still got a long way to go to be where I want to be.” So far this summer, the Patriots sound cautiously optimistic about Campbell’s progress. His development may key their potential for a Super Bowl return as much as any other player on the roster outside of Maye. So far, so good. Campbell allowed just a few would-be sacks over 20 training camp practices, and cracked open the widest rushing lanes of the summer during joint practices against the Eagles this past week. Opposite Campbell, it’s unlikely the Pats will receive the same rate of play at right tackle, where Morgan Moses played every game last year for the first time in three seasons at an above-average level and is now 35. If Moses gets injured, Lomu is next up. And despite all of Campbell’s pearls of wisdom, the rookie hardly looks game ready. The Patriots can manage one soft spot in their pass protection through scheme and Maye’s brilliance. But if Campbell struggles, fighting a two-front war will be untenable against quality opponents and for any sustained period, much like the Super Bowl. This is the pressure Campbell carries into Year 2. And what better way for this old soul to start than by facing some old demons in Seattle Week 1. “He’s a young player that we’ve to continue to stay on, and he wants to do a good job, and he wants to play hard for us and do all those things,” Vrabel said. “So, (we) just keep moving, keep moving forward.”