CHICAGO — The Patriots had an unlikely hero in their secondary for Sunday’s win over the Bears.

Special-teams ace Brenden Schooler played a specialized role, spying Bears quarterback Caleb Williams on third down. He made the most of his five defensive snaps, forcing Williams to throw the ball away with a QB hit midway through the second quarter and sacking the rookie QB in the third quarter. Schooler said after the win that it was his first sack at any level of football. It was one of nine sacks for the Patriots in Week 10.

The Patriots named it the “Longhorn” package since Schooler played collegiately at Texas. So, Schooler would look over at defensive coordinator DeMarcus Covington every third down to see if he would throw up the horn signal with his hands.

“It started early on in the week. They told me this is kind of what we were going to be doing and there were a couple of different ways we were going to get into it today,” Schooler said after the game. “Just super excited to get in there and help the team in any way we can today.”

Added head coach Jerod Mayo, “We’ve done things like that before. Again, we talk about next man up. Now you’ve got a guy who was primarily a special teams player making contributions.

“He’s fast, he’s athletic, and he’s a football player. We try not to put anyone in a box.”

Schooler impressed defensive teammate Davon Godchaux, who wants to see more of the Longhorn package.

“He needs to be there more often, especially against fast quarterbacks,” Godchaux said. “We got (Bills QB) Josh Allen, we got a couple of them coming up. He needs to be on defense more often.”

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