A Patriots rookie and undrafted free agent made life miserable for Aaron Rodgers
New England Patriots
“I’m going to clown him a little bit for being tackled by [Rodgers].”
FOXBOROUGH — Gabe Jacas’ primary focus out on the football field is chasing down quarterbacks and dragging them down into the turf.
As such, the 6-foot-4, 261-pound edge rusher isn’t often thinking of interceptions when it comes to doling out damage against opposing signal-callers.
The Patriots 2026 second-round pick acknowledged on Sunday that he never had an interception in his football career, even in high school or college.
Until Sunday afternoon, that is.
The rookie picked a good time to finally record a pick in just his second career NFL game, snagging a tumbling ball out of the air off a tip drill — and snapping a stretch of 310 pass attempts for Aaron Rodgers without an interception.
Jacas’ turnover — coupled with a scoop-and-score touchdown from second-year pro Elijah Ponder — helped set the tone in a dominant defensive showing for the Patriots on Sunday en route to a 20-3 win.
“The ball was up and I just got it,” Jacas said postgame. “It was just surreal because I never had a pick before in my career. … It was pretty cool to get the first pick against Aaron Rodgers.”
New England’s defense needed all of the help it could get on Sunday, with several key cogs on both sides of the ball going down with injury.
While Michael Onwenu’s reported season-ending ankle injury is the most consequential setback for New England, the Patriots also lost several key contributors on defense to injury during Sunday’s win, including edge rusher Dre’Mont Jones, safety Craig Woodson, and safety Dell Pettus.
The loss of Jones to a shoulder injury was a particularly brutal result for a Patriots team that was already paper-thin with pass-rushing depth going into the season, especially with Harold Landry still on the physically unable to perform (PUP) list due to a nagging knee issue.
With Jones out of the equation, Mike Vrabel and his coaching staff had to turn to a relatively green group of pass-rushers for heavy reps, including Jacas, 2026 seventh-round pick Quintayvious Hutchins, and Ponder, who popped last year for New England as an undrafted free agent out of Cal Poly.
What that shorthanded unit lacked in experience, they made up for in effort on Sunday against a future Hall of Famer in Rodgers.
“Those are the guys we’ve been playing with, and I think [Quintayvious Hutchins] had a good rush there later on in the game and factored,” Vrabel said postgame. “These guys have all been practicing and working really hard, and I guess I’m just proud of them. You look over there and they’ve [Pittsburgh] got T.J. Watt and [Alex] Highsmith and [Nick] Herbig, and we’ve got Ponder and Jacas and Q, so I’m proud of our guys for going out there and being ready.”
In total, New England’s defense — which was also playing without starting corner Carlton Davis — sacked Rodgers four times, forced two turnovers, and hit the veteran QB seven more times in an afternoon where Pittsburgh only gained 235 total yards of offense.
“Coach got on our ass all week in practice: ‘We’ve gotta get in the middle of the pocket. We’ve gotta put our hands up. … We’ve gotta put pressure on the quarterback. Anybody.’ That was our goal, and we took that personally,” defensive lineman Christian Barmore said postgame.
It was Barmore who jump-started New England’s defensive touchdown in the fourth quarter — winning his rep at the line of scrimmage and knocking the ball out of Rodgers’ grasp. Ponder was there to snag the fumble and bring it back into the end zone to give New England some much-needed insurance in what was a 13-3 game at the time.
“Once I heard the stadium erupt, my teammates coming to celebrate with me, I was just overwhelmed with joy,” Ponder said. “I’m glad that I was able to make that play with all the dudes on the field and to help out the team, really.”
Ponder — who impressed last year under limited snaps with four sacks over 15 games — was a thorn in Rodgers’ side all day, posting a sack, three tackles for loss, two QB hits, and that defensive touchdown.
Jacas has seemingly moved past an abbreviated training camp and up-and-down preseason, with the rookie showcasing his playmaking skills in each of New England’s first two games of the year.
Along with his interception against Rodgers, he forced an incompletion from Pittsburgh’s QB while dialing up pressure on him. Jacas also recorded a sack and two tackles for a loss against Seattle in Week 1.
“He cares, extremely, and it’s an extreme amount,” Vrabel said of Jacas. “He cares, he comes in early, he stays late … he works with all the coaches, he cares about his teammates, he goes hard, he makes mistakes. And the thing about Gabe is he can work through mistakes, and I think that’s critical for any young player trying to improve, is you have to be willing to make new mistakes and be OK with that, and be able to be coached, and I think he’s been able to do that.”
Jacas has already made a sizable impact for New England in his limited time in the pro ranks.
But, the rookie still got some ribbing from a few veterans on an afternoon when he asserted himself as a legitimate cog in New England’s shorthanded defensive unit.
“I’m going to clown him a little bit for being tackled by [Rodgers],” cornerback Christian Gonzalez said of Jacas.
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