{"id":874017,"date":"2026-04-25T02:24:36","date_gmt":"2026-04-25T02:24:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/874017\/"},"modified":"2026-04-25T02:24:36","modified_gmt":"2026-04-25T02:24:36","slug":"patriots-draft-gabe-jacas-ed-illinois-with-the-55th-pick-in-round-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/874017\/","title":{"rendered":"Patriots draft Gabe Jacas, ED, Illinois with the 55th pick in Round 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

The New England Patriots<\/a> have made their second pick of the 2026 NFL Draft. After addressing offensive tackle in Round 1, they added to their defensive edge in Round 2.<\/p>\n

Following a trade up with the Chargers, the Patriots selected Gabe Jacas out of Illinois with the 55th overall selection.<\/p>\n

Advertisement<\/p>\n

In order to move up, the Patriots invested the 63rd overall pick as well as picks No. 131 and No. 202 in the fourth and sixth rounds, respectively.<\/p>\n

Jacas, 21, spent his entire four-year career at Illinois. A starter from his freshman season on, he amassed 50 in-game appearances with 43 starts as well as 183 tackles and 27 sacks. A two-time All-Big Ten selection \u2014 second team in 2025, third team in 2024 \u2014 he is joining an experienced edge rotation in New England<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Patriots entered the draft with veterans Harold Landry<\/a> and Dre\u2019Mont Jones<\/a> as their starters. The 6-foot-4, 260-pound Jacas is unlikely to push one of them down the depth chart, but despite his relative youth adds a ready-made piece to the rotation.<\/p>\n

With Jacas in the fold following the Patriots\u2019 second trade-up, the team has six selections left in this year\u2019s draft. The next will come at No. 95 in the third round.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The New England Patriots have made their second pick of the 2026 NFL Draft. After addressing offensive tackle…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":874018,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2050],"tags":[4185,88727,10559,7,23926,287,8578,9499,1682,4728,21377,1167,249,2326,2094,6,208,4736],"class_list":{"0":"post-874017","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-england-patriots","8":"tag-champaign","9":"tag-college-football-game","10":"tag-dremont-jones","11":"tag-football","12":"tag-gabe-jacas","13":"tag-harold-landry","14":"tag-icon-sportswire","15":"tag-il","16":"tag-illinois","17":"tag-illinois-fighting-illini","18":"tag-illinois-football","19":"tag-new-england","20":"tag-new-england-patriots","21":"tag-newengland","22":"tag-newenglandpatriots","23":"tag-nfl","24":"tag-patriots","25":"tag-western-michigan-broncos"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116462974666431768","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/874017","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=874017"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/874017\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/874018"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=874017"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=874017"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=874017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}