FOXBORO, Mass. — The New England Patriots’ offense looked substantially different during Mac Jones’ first three starts this season than it did with Bailey Zappe behind center.
With Jones, the Patriots were operating mostly out of the shotgun, attempting frequent deep balls and rarely utilizing play-action. Before the high ankle sprain that sidelined him for three weeks, Jones ranked first in the NFL in deep pass attempts and last in play-action usage.
Conversely, during Zappe’s stint as a fill-in starter, New England’s play-action rate tripled, the shotgun rate dropped and the deep shots became less prevalent, placing a greater emphasis on easier, safer throws.
That disparity became a hot topic during and after Jones’ injury-related layoff. Why were head coach Bill Belichick and play-caller Matt Patricia using one game plan in Jones’ starts and a different — and notably more effective — one for Zappe?
Patricia was asked that question Friday ahead of the Patriots’ Week 8 matchup with the New York Jets. According to him, the play-calling tendencies changed because of opponent-related matchups, not the switch behind center.
“I think that it’s more based on our game plans for those weeks,” Patricia said. “So certainly a little bit different game-planning earlier, whether it was Cleveland or whatever it was versus now obviously for the Jets, which is completely different based on defensively what they do. I’d say from an offensive standpoint, most of our stuff is built universally for all the quarterbacks and what we think is best for that game more so than a particular quarterback, if that would make sense.”
Under Patricia and quarterbacks coach Joe Judge, the Patriots adopted a more aggressive passing attack early this season, calling for Jones to attack downfield more frequently than he did during his promising rookie campaign. Last season, he threw deep on 11.1% of his pass attempts, per Pro Football Focus, which ranked in the bottom half of the NFL. So far this season, that number is up to 20.4%, the highest rate of any QB.
That philosophical shift has coincided with a sharp uptick in Jones turnovers. He’s thrown six interceptions in four games, and 5.8% of his passes have been picked off. The latter ranks last among qualified signal-callers — Pittsburgh rookie Kenny Pickett is the only other above 4.5% — and is more than double what Jones’ interception rate was in 2021 (2.5%).
The Patriots seemingly could benefit from finding a middle ground between the approach they’ve used with Jones and their more conservative Zappe game plans. Jones reportedly would welcome such a change.
During his Thursday news conference, Patricia mentioned that he and Jones recently had “a long conversation about the three levels of throws and how defenses read those … (and) how being balanced in all that helps the quarterback.”
“He’s great,” Patricia said. “He’s a guy that has great ideas and thoughts and looks at the game, for a young player, very maturely and takes the coaching. He loves to talk football, loves to learn. … I think he’s got a great football mind. He’s extremely open to all of it. He’s a lot of fun to work with.”
Jones played three series in last week’s loss to the Chicago Bears before giving way to Zappe. The 2021 first-round draft pick was removed from the injury report Wednesday, and Belichick said he will be fully available for Sunday’s Jets game — though the head coach declined to commit to him as the Patriots’ starter in future weeks.
