The New England Patriots hope to see Marte Mapu capitalize on the new lease on life he's received with Jack Gibbens' signing with the Arizona Cardinals on Sunday. Gibbens started eight games for the Pats in 2025, after Robert Spillane went down with an injury, and performed quite well.
First and foremost, Gibbens was a special teams player. He played 357 special teams snaps. Relatively, that's a much higher percentage of snaps than the 491 defensive snaps he played. Gibbens was on the field for the defense just 48 percent of the time. That's a lot for a guy who started the year as a second-teamer, though. And that's what Mapu may be staring at in 2026.
Mapu, of course, was transitioning from safety to linebacker in 2025. He'd do well to become as good a tackler as Gibbens was (81 in 2025, 92 in 2023). He isn't there yet on shedding tacklers, though he has potential to get better in the run using his 33.5-inch arm length. Having added roughly 15 pounds since the draft, Mapu is a good size and is merely small technical tweaks away from potentially having a similar effect on the defense this fall.
Of course, Mapu still has potential roadblocks that could keep him from ascending in the LB room during the 2026 NFL season.
Chad Muma and KJ Britt Could Stand in Marte Mapu's Way
KJ Britt, a former Auburn Tigers star who signed with New England on Sunday, and Chad Muma, who played his way off the practice squad at the end of the 2025 season after being claimed off waivers last August, are Mapu's biggest threats for playing time.
When discussing the hierarchy at the position moving forward, ESPN's Mike Reiss claimed that "KJ Britt filled that type of role in Miami in 2025 (very smart, gets guys lined up), so he'd be the projected Gibbens replacement."
While Muma and Mapu were forgotten about, as Reiss jumped to practice-squad players like Otis Reese and Amari Gainer, he later acknowledged that they are also in the mix.
Britt is a thumping linebacker who stops the run, just like Gibbens. Muma also plays similarly to Gibbens, though admittedly at a lower level, hence serving as a depth piece for most of the 2025 season.
Mapu needs to show enough improvement against the run to jump Muma this spring, and if he can be valuable enough, maybe even push Britt, who's guaranteed to get an extremely high number of snaps in special teams regardless of how the LB room plays out.