The comments Mac Jones made about how the New England Patriots practiced last week left some people scratching their heads. But, for now, let's forget about whether the rookie was right or wrong to call out his teammates.
Instead, let's focus on what he actually said. Did the Patriots really practice poorly after the bye week? How could that be possible, given the importance of last Saturday's game against the Indianapolis Colts?
Well, Julian Edelman wasn't surprised when he heard Jones' comments. During Wednesday's "Pardon My Take" episode, the retired Patriots receiver touched on a similar situation he experienced in 2013, when New England enjoyed a bye week before losing to the Carolina Panthers in the infamous Rob Gronkowski/Luke Kuechly non-call game.
Here are his full remarks:
"Nah, because I remember we came off of -- we were a young team in 2013. And they're a young team, like they have a couple of older guys like (Devin) McCourty, and (Matthew) Slater and (David) Andrews, now, who's getting a little older. Like, they have older veterans, but a majority of that team is young. When your quarterback's a rookie, that's crazy. And they could've hit a wall. This is, like, Week 14. These guys are used to playing 10 weeks, 12 weeks and they get a month off, go home for Christmas, go to the bowl game ... It's a completely different thing. Competetive stamina starts to come now.
"But, bringing it back to our story, I remember we won a game (Week 9 against Pittsburgh Steelers), it was the week we came back (from the bye) and we played Carolina (Week 11) -- remember they beat us with the no-call on Gronk? When Kuechly was there? They were a really good football team. ... Monday night football, Cam was playing good. ... We were a young team and we didn't take that week of practice -- you kind of take it for granted. The teams that were always really good, like the veteran teams, they took advantage of those weeks to self-scout, work on fundamentals, work on things, not go through the motions. Like, you have to have a real good set of leaders at all those spots to get that going. And I'm not saying they don't, but they have a young team. I could definitely see (them having a bad week of practice)."
Those Patriots eventually lost in the AFC Championship Game to the Denver Broncos. Obviously, this year's team hopes for a better fate.
New England will host the Buffalo Bills this weekend in what could be a de facto AFC East title game. The Patriots will need a better week of practice if they're to rebound from the Colts loss and win the biggest game of their season.
