{"id":245990,"date":"2026-04-25T08:52:26","date_gmt":"2026-04-25T08:52:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/245990\/"},"modified":"2026-04-25T08:52:26","modified_gmt":"2026-04-25T08:52:26","slug":"texas-techs-jacob-rodriguez-selected-by-miami-dolphins-in-nfl-draft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/245990\/","title":{"rendered":"Texas Tech&#8217;s Jacob Rodriguez selected by Miami Dolphins in NFL draft"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Before the 2025 season, Jacob Rodriguez weighed his options between a\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.dallasnews.com\/sports\/texas-tech-red-raiders\/\" data-link=\"native\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"\">Texas Tech<\/a> return and the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dallasnews.com\/topic\/nfl-draft\/\" data-link=\"native\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"\">NFL draft<\/a>. His choice to play one more year for the Red Raiders paid off.<\/p>\n<p>The Miami Dolphins selected Rodriguez with the 43rd\u00a0overall pick in the 2026 NFL draft on Friday. The linebacker earned national recognition last season for his role as a leader on Tech\u2019s record-setting defense.<\/p>\n<p>Rodriguez (6-1, 235 pounds) finished his final college season with 128 total tackles, 11 tackles for loss, seven forced fumbles, six pass deflections and four interceptions. He had <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dallasnews.com\/sports\/texas-tech-red-raiders\/2026\/03\/26\/jacob-rodriguez-nfl-draft-texas-tech-pro-day-dallas-cowboys\/\" data-link=\"native\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"\">a knack for forcing fumbles<\/a> throughout the year, leading all FBS defenders in that statistical category.<\/p>\n<p>Rodriguez racked up several awards in his final season as a Red Raider. He was notably given the Bednarik Award as the nation\u2019s top defensive player and the Butkus Award as the country\u2019s top linebacker. He even <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dallasnews.com\/sports\/texas-tech-red-raiders\/2025\/11\/06\/texas-tech-defense-jacob-rodriguez-wife-emma\/\" data-link=\"native\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"\">earned Heisman Trophy hype<\/a>, finishing fifth in voting for the coveted award at the end of the campaign.<\/p>\n<p>The linebacker had a long journey before he became a standout defender. The Wichita Falls native was originally a freshman quarterback at Virginia before he moved to the defensive side of the ball after transferring to Texas Tech. Now, he\u2019ll look to maintain his high level of play on Sundays.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Before the 2025 season, Jacob Rodriguez weighed his options between a\u00a0Texas Tech return and the NFL draft. His&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":245991,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[1111,123,125,124,99362],"class_list":["post-245990","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-miami","tag-article","tag-miami","tag-miami-headlines","tag-miami-news","tag-tp-nfl-draft"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245990","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245990"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245990\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/245991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}