Aside from the obvious - Drake Maye and A.J. Brown - I’m not sure any player on the Patriots got as much shine during mandatory minicamp as Elijah Ponder. The cynic in me wonders if the coaching staff went a little overboard, perhaps sending a message to second-round pick Gabe Jacas.
Then I pop in the first of his four sacks from last season. Ponder blows by Tampa Bay All-Pro LT Tristan Wirfs like he was some slappy from Utah Tech. It’s a speed rush, but when Baker Mayfield slips out of the tackle, Ponder basically crawls to stay alive and eventually gets his man.
UDFA rookie Elijah Ponder with the win vs. Tristan Wirfs and gets the sack on his second chance pic.twitter.com/aCiO8GvvQI
— Nate Tice (@Nate_Tice) November 10, 2025
A week later, the UDFA out of Cal Poly got a clean-up sack of Justin Fields. Ponder added takedowns of Jaxson Dart in week 13 and Quinn Ewers in week 18, delivering on the faith Mike Vrabel, Zak Kuhr and the defensive braintrust showed in him.
But now, with Harold Landry sidelined all of the spring after knee surgery, and Jacas unsigned while he recovers from a knee procedure, the Pats turned to Ponder to run with the ones, and safe to say, they liked the look of it.
“Elijah Ponder has been a phenomenal pro this spring,” Kuhr said. “He's taken great steps to improve his technique, his play demeanor.”
That was something Vrabel singled out, not just for Ponder but also for a number of young players in the Patriots ecosystem for a second year. So much growth can happen now, from the weight-room work, diet, overall understanding of what is expected of them as pros, and, of course, knowledge of the playbook.
“Young players that work hard and have a full offseason to train, sometimes that’s a great window of opportunity for a guy that is 22, 23 years old, to make some significant improvement in their speed, in their strength, and explosion,” Vrabel noted. “So, hopefully that is what we will see.”
Ponder agreed with that assessment.
“I think it's just more comfortability. Just gaining the connections with all the players, having, you know, that year (under his belt).”
Playing at a lower level collegiately, it’s hard to know how quickly a player like Ponder can make the adjustment, but as you saw, by the second half of last season, he was a productive rotational piece. To his credit, nothing the staff asked him to do seemed to