EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT OF PLAYER PERSONNEL ELIOT WOLF<\/p>\n
PRESS CONFERENCE
April 24, 2026<\/p>\n
Q: I’m wondering if you could just take us through the first few minutes leading up to the trade to go get Gabe [Jacas], and then how that was executed.<\/p>\n
EW: Yeah, we were exploring the board, and Gabe was the highest rated player that we had on there. Obviously at a position of need, and we just felt like rather than waiting \u2013 frankly, again, I said this last night about Caleb [Lomu], too, but I was a little bit surprised that he wasn’t off the board already. So, we tried to pull the trigger. We were calling a bunch of teams before we ended up making the trade, and fortunately the Chargers wanted to acquire some more picks, so we were able to get up and get the player that we coveted.<\/p>\n
Q: I’m just curious, with Eli [Raridon], what did you guys see from him, and what made you want to draft him?<\/p>\n
EW: Tremendous athlete. One year player, has overcome some serious injuries there at Notre Dame to really kind of find his own this year. You can see him sort of, again, coming into his own as we went through the season. You could just see his confidence growing and growing throughout the year. Kind of an all-around guy, probably more of a pass catcher first, but a willing blocker. Again, like I said about all these rookies, he’s going to have to get stronger, but really, really good worker, has a lot of talent, 6’6″, 245, tested incredibly well. Again, just some untapped potential there with only the one year of real playing.<\/p>\n
Q: With Eli, with the knee, not only in high school, but then again in his freshman year, how much of the medicals did you have to look at, and how comfortable are you with what he’s had to go through?<\/p>\n
EW: Yeah, Jim Whalen, Dr. [Scott] Martin, Mike Baum and the whole crew signed off on it, and no real concerns. We brought Eli in for a pre-draft visit, and so they were able to examine him not only at the Combine, but also here, and no concerns.<\/p>\n
Q: You guys start the draft with 11 picks and obviously used a handful to move up. Was that the plan going in, to be aggressive as opposed to sitting and waiting and using some of those extra Day 3 picks to get the guys you wanted?<\/p>\n
EW: Yeah, I wouldn’t say that that was necessarily the plan. Again, as I say a lot, open to doing what we think is best for the team. We thought this would be a possibility just based on the amount of names that we had on the board in the first couple rounds, and it ended up going that way. Again, with Caleb and with Gabe, we did not think that they were going to be there when we got them. We didn’t think Eli was going to be there when we got him either, but all those tight ends started to go off the board, and we said, ‘Maybe we can just kind of sit here and see if he’ll fall to us.’ So again, just excited to add all three of these guys.<\/p>\n
Q: Watching some of Gabe’s film, it looks like he’s bowlegged. Is there any downside to that as far as injury risk or anything positionally for him?<\/p>\n
EW: I don’t remember him being bowlegged, so I’ll have to go back and look at that. It wasn’t something that was discussed by us, but to answer the general bowlegged question, that’s not really something that concerns us. The knock-knee thing, the opposite of the bowlegs, is something that from a stability standpoint, particularly with some of the bigger guys, we try to shy away from.<\/p>\n
Q: With Gabe, what was it about his play style that appealed to you guys, and what did you see from him just on his visit to the facility as well?<\/p>\n
EW: Yeah, I mean, the play style is what we’re all about. Toughness, determination, grit. He plays a ton of snaps. He plays really hard. He’s super physical. He runs to the ball. Not afraid to take on blockers. His junior year, he played a little bit more inside on third downs and things like that, so that’s something that we felt like he could do. Just really the play style is something that stood out, and as far as the visit, this guy is high energy. He’s all about football. He wants to be good. He’s powerful. The coaches were ecstatic when we were able to acquire him, and the visit was a big part of that. Just getting comfortable with him as a person.<\/p>\n
Q: Gabe told us he walked out of the visit and kind of felt like it would be a good spot for him. Did you get that sense that he was feeling that way after the visit?<\/p>\n
EW: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, this happens with a few guys every year. He was one of the guys that came in and everyone was just kind of gushing about him. His energy, his personality. He’s all about football. He’s a tough guy. Frank Piraino, our strength coach, was fired up about him because he’s a weight room guy and a wrestler which, obviously, Frank has that background as well. So yeah, he made quite an impression when he was here.<\/p>\n
Q: I noticed that you guys have added a couple guys with wrestling backgrounds. So, I was curious, is that a significant factor in the evaluation at all for some of the guys, especially who are going to be working in the trenches? Are there certain skills, from your perspective, that do directly translate from wrestling to football?<\/p>\n
EW: Yeah, I wouldn’t say it’s something we necessarily look for. I think it’s an added bonus. If we like the film it’s like, “Oh, this guy’s a wrestler.” So, it’s kind of a point, like when you say a guy’s a wrestler, you kind of know what that’s talking about with the lower body strength, the leverage and obviously, those things translate to playing offensive or defensive line.<\/p>\n
Q: Eliot, I know it’s a different year, different players involved, but you shared last year before picking TreVeyon [Henderson], there was some sort of debate leading up to those picks. It sounds like Caleb [Lomu] and Gabe might have been just players everyone agreed upon. Was there any debate around Eli’s pick or any other similar conversations this year?<\/p>\n
EW: There was probably most debate around the Eli pick, and then all those guys ended up going. So, Eli was the highest player available on our board for a while there, but there were some guys that were kind of on the same level. But obviously, needing a tight end, having a guy that’s 6’6″, 245, that is kind of just scratching the surface, ultimately won out.<\/p>\n
Q: You mentioned that the coaches were ecstatic with Gabe’s visit. Specifically with Mike Smith, how did he play a role in maybe wanting to draft Gabe? Because Gabe spoke very highly of him when we spoke with him earlier in the night.<\/p>\n
EW: Yeah, I’m sure, as you all know, Mike’s pretty high energy. So, they really connected, from what I understand. And all the coaches write up the players that we give them. They spend a lot of time with them. They put in a ton of work. They go to the pro days. They go to Zooms. I just can’t really speak enough to the work that coaches have done. The willingness, again, after a longer season than a lot of teams, had to dive right in in March and get back to it. So, Mike was one of those, obviously, and he and Gabe really connected.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT OF PLAYER PERSONNEL ELIOT WOLF PRESS CONFERENCEApril 24, 2026 Q: I’m wondering if you could…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":874082,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2050],"tags":[7,1263,1167,249,2326,2094,6,15,208,1678],"class_list":{"0":"post-874081","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-england-patriots","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-hp-article","10":"tag-new-england","11":"tag-new-england-patriots","12":"tag-newengland","13":"tag-newenglandpatriots","14":"tag-nfl","15":"tag-nfl-draft","16":"tag-patriots","17":"tag-transcripts"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116463363891973283","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/874081","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=874081"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/874081\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/874082"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=874081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=874081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=874081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}