New England Patriots
With training camp less than a week away, this unusual NFL storyline remains unsettled.
Gabe Jacas has not been present at Patriots minicamp or OTAs. (AP Photo/CJ Gunther)
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Patriots rookie linebacker Gabe Jacas missed spring workouts and has yet to sign his contract with training camp less than a week away.
With New England in need of edge depth after losing K’Lavon Chaisson in free agency and placing Harold Landry on the PUP list, there are concerns that Jacas might not be able to play at all this season.
“Rookies generally do show up when they’re not signed in the spring. That’s normal — and he didn’t do that,” Sports Illustrated’s Albert Breer said during an appearance on NBC Sports Boston. “When you aren’t signed and it’s the start of training camp, you don’t show up because if you’re not under contract you’re not going to start practicing, especially when the pads go on.”
“This moves to another stage, and I think you’re inching closer now to the idea that maybe this winds up being a redshirt year for him.”
Training camp is scheduled to start on Saturday in Foxborough. The ramp up torwads fully padded practices is coming. New England is three weeks away from its preseason opener against the Colts.
The Patriots traded up to select Jacas at No. 55 overall in April’s NFL draft. Executive vice president of player personnel Eliot Wolf said the Patriots “coveted” Jacas and saw him as a player that could help fill a position of need.
Jacas, who turned 22 in March, is second on the all-time sack list for Illinois football, only trailing three-time Pro Bowler Simeon Rice.
The Patriots have a dynamic interior pass-rushing duo in Milton Williams and Christian Barmore, but their ability to generate pressure off the edge remains a question mark heading into training camp, especially with last year’s sack leader Landry sidelined.
Jacas, a 6-foot-4 inch, 261-pound edge rusher who said he models his game after Matthew Judon, was expected to help with that.
Now, it’s unclear when he’ll hit the field, if at all this season.
ESPN’s Mike Reiss reported last month that Jacas’s absence has to do, at least in part, with the Patriots’ decision to not give him a “participation agreement.”
“Most draft picks receive such an agreement,” Reiss wrote. “Which states that if they were to sustain an injury prior to signing their first NFL contract, the team would still be obligated to sign him to a contract based on the slot he was drafted.”
Two NFL clubs told Reiss that they gave Jacas a passing grade on his physical exam, but there was a list of injuries mentioned in the ESPN story including a labral tear in his shoulder and a stress fracture in his foot, along with a “clean up” knee procedure that was performed in the offseason.
Jacas’s injury situation only makes the situation more complicated, Breer said.
“This is a position of need,” Breer said. “I’d say of the guys in that draft class, when they were drafted, this is probably the guy we were looking at as potentially having the highest instant impact based on who he was coming out of college and based on the need that they have at the position.”
“This is a guy that they were counting on playing, and for him to miss not just the playing time but the classroom time in the spring, and now this is still unsettled going into training camp, would only indicate that this is only going to get harder and harder for him to contribute as a rookie.”
Khari A. Thompson
Khari Thompson covers professional sports for Boston.com. Before joining the team in 2022, Khari covered college football for The Clarion Ledger in Jackson, Miss.
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