The New England Patriots gave up their 63rd, 131st, and 202nd picks to acquire the 55th overall selection from the Los Angeles Chargers and draft linebacker Gabe Jacas in the most recent NFL Draft. Naturally, head coach Mike Vrabel has significant expectations for the rookie. However, after missing time during the offseason because of a knee injury, when Jacas took the field against the Indianapolis Colts, Vrabel called him out from the sidelines.
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“I think that it needs to be better,” Vrabel told the reporters. “It was better on Monday or whatever. I guess not Monday, but whenever we practiced Saturday, I guess it was better Saturday than it was in the game. We pointed some things out to him in the game and I felt it was really cool to him to be able to make those corrections and look at some of the body positions that we feel like he should be in and he was really conscious of those and I saw those things translate in just a quick short amount of time from the meeting after the game to Saturday’s practice.”
The No. 55 overall pick started at edge opposite fellow rookie Quintayvious Hutchins and helped set up the defense’s first interception of the preseason. The rookie finished the game playing 38% of the defensive snaps, as the matchup tied at 13-13. Mike Vrabel, however, had an issue with Jacas’ performance on the special teams, as the head coach didn’t expect the player blocking Jacas to be capable of blocking him.
“I challenged him on a kickoff, and he made a tackle,” said Vrabel after calling him out from the sidelines. “I didn’t think that his efforts were maybe good enough on the kickoff. I didn’t expect that the guy that was blocking him to be able to block him, and then I challenged him, and he came up with a tackle on the kickoff. So that was a positive.”
Jacas recorded five tackles during the game, while playing 37 snaps between defense and special teams. The Patriots, meanwhile, got their first look at the rookie, considering Jacas missed an extended amount of time during this offseason while recovering from an arthroscopic knee procedure he underwent shortly after the draft. However, after Mike Vrabel called him out, Jacas acknowledged his mistake and now knows what he needs to do.
“He was like, ‘I’m tired of seeing you get blocked.’ So I was like, ‘[Expletive], I’m not gonna get blocked.’ So, that’s what I did. Vrabel demands the best out of his players,” the rookie said, per CLNS Media.
The Patriots will next face the Philadelphia Eagles in Week 2 of the preseason. And after Vrabel noted that Jacas has been getting better in practice, the head coach is surely expecting the rookie to show further improvement against the Eagles as well.