{"id":921653,"date":"2026-10-05T15:38:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-05T15:38:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/921653\/"},"modified":"2026-10-05T15:38:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-05T15:38:09","slug":"c-j-gardner-johnson-efton-chism-iii-is-a-practice-squad-player-who-made-a-hell-of-a-catch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/921653\/","title":{"rendered":"C.J. Gardner-Johnson: Efton Chism III is a ‘practice squad player’ who ‘made a hell of a catch’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Efton Chism III<\/a> made one of the best catches of the NFL season Sunday, helping the New England Patriots<\/a> rally to upset the division rival Buffalo Bills<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But Buffalo’s C.J. Gardner-Johnson<\/a> apparently wasn’t impressed.<\/p>\n

Chism’s diving one-handed touchdown catch with 1:50 remaining proved to be the game-winning score in New England’s 29-26 victory in Buffalo, but Gardner-Johnson dismissed the pivotal play as unlikely to ever happen again and called Chism a “practice squad player” who “made a hell of a catch.”<\/p>\n

“We’re not going to get into any bulletin board material,” Gardner-Johnson said. “An elevated guy made a hell of a catch — probably won’t hear from him again. … A practice squad player made a hell of a play. That’s all I’m going to tell you. You do it again, and he probably won’t make it again.”<\/p>\n

Chism joined the Patriots as an undrafted free agent in 2025 and won a spot on New England’s 53-man roster at the start of last season. He has appeared in 11 regular-season games in his career and has never been on the Patriots’ practice squad.<\/p>\n

Patriots coach Mike Vrabel, when informed of Gardner-Johnson’s comments, fired back at the veteran defensive back, who is on his fifth NFL team in the last two years.<\/p>\n

“For a guy that has been on eight teams in four years, I mean, I guess he knows the drill,” Vrabel said Monday during an interview with Boston radio station WEEI.<\/p>\n

Vrabel went on to praise Chism, who has seven catches — including two touchdowns — over his brief NFL career.<\/p>\n

“Nobody works harder,” Vrabel told WEEI. “You love to see players take advantage of opportunities and help the team win.<\/p>\n

“He is very well respected. He practices. He is on the show team. He takes a million reps. Nobody logs more miles or yards or whatever we track than [Chism].”<\/p>\n

Gardner-Johnson also commented Sunday on New England’s overall performance, saying the Patriots “didn’t do s— better than us.”<\/p>\n

“They won the game, whatever,” he said. “They didn’t do s—. They didn’t do s— better than us. We’ve got to play better.<\/p>\n

“And they can mark that. We’ll be back to see them at the end of the year, so they better have that same energy. They put up what, 20-something points? They barely scored. They struggled all game.”<\/p>\n

The Bills (3-1) play Chism and the Patriots (2-2) again in Week 13 in New England.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Efton Chism III made one of the best catches of the NFL season Sunday, helping the New England…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":921654,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[436],"tags":[1748,49,48,514,82],"class_list":["post-921653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-buffalo-bills","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/921653","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=921653"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/921653\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/921654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=921653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=921653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=921653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}