Bill Belichick has been given every opportunity to limit "Zappe Fever" to a minor outbreak. Instead, he's allowed it to become a full-on epidemic.
Over the last two weeks, the Patriots head coach has been asked numerous times whether Mac Jones will remain New England's starting quarterback once he's healthy. But, time after time, Belichick has refused the bait and enabled fans and pundits alike to continue speculating about a potential quarterback controversy.
And his answers have remained consistent.
"Yeah, I'm not going to get into a lot of hypotheticals on all the different things that might or might not happen and all that," he said last Monday after Bailey Zappe led the Patriots to a 29-0 win over the Detroit Lions. "That's, to me, a waste of time. I'm not going to sit around here and dream up scenarios and all that. We'll take things as they come and go from there.
"Obviously, Mac wasn't active (against the Lions), so it wasn't any part of any decision."
He sang a similar tune after Zappe played even better in New England's 38-15 win over the Browns in Cleveland.
"We'll see how that process is," Belichick said during a Monday morning Zoom call. "Mac still wasn't able to play (Sunday). So we'll continue to evaluate him and see how he's doing physically."
The trend continued minutes later during Belichick's weekly appearance on WEEI's "The Greg Hill Show" program.
"(Playing Jones) wasn't an option yesterday," Belichick said. "He wasn't active for the game, so there was really no option to play him."
When asked whether Zappe is gunning for Jones' job, Belichick sounded a bit annoyed.
"It's every player's job to be ready to go," he said. "That's their job. Mac wasn't active yesterday, so there's nothing really to talk about."
Obviously, there is something to talk about, and Belichick is partly responsible for the mounting speculation. So why, then, won't he simply end the debate and publicly back Jones as the franchise quarterback? After all, he had no issue with doing so in 2014 when Jimmy Garoppolo played well after replacing Tom Brady in an ugly loss to the Kansas City Chiefs -- though the two situations aren't perfectly analogous.
Really, there are five possibilities.
Option 1: Belichick is just doing the Patriots-speak thing and giving boilerplate non-answers.
Option 2: He's legitimately considering giving the job to Zappe.
Option 3: Belichick's using the entire thing as an opportunity to motivate Jones, who reportedly had grown disgruntled before suffering his injury.
Option 4: He thinks New England gains an advantage by keeping upcoming opponents in the dark.
Option 5: Belichick is just screwing with reporters and enjoying the chaos, "Ignore the Noise" be damned.
Now, none of those scenarios are mutually exclusive. Plus, trying to get inside the mind NFL's most inscrutable coach is a fool's errand.
But it's also fair to wonder how any of this actually helps the 3-3 Patriots, whose uphill quest for an NFL playoff spot won't be aided by any distractions. To that end, we probably can rule out Options 1 and 5, which means there must be some ulterior motive for Belichick's approach to the Zappe-Jones discourse.
The good news is that this week should offer plenty of clarity, regardless of what Belichick says during press conferences.
Jones reportedly is expected to be healthy enough to play next Monday night when New England hosts the Bears. And Belichick's continual downplaying of Zappe's performance actually might be reflective of his genuine beliefs on the rookie's play, rather than an attempt to keep the fourth-round pick humble.
Thus, all signs point toward Jones making his return in Week 7. The progress he's made over the last few weeks indicates as much.
However, all bets are off if Zappe gets the start against Chicago. Such a decision might be about the Patriots wanting to give Jones extra time to fully complete his recovery, but you'd be justified in believing something else is going on -- thanks to Belichick.
The Patriots head coach has had every chance to nip this thing in the bud, yet he can't bring himself to do it. So, speculate away.
