New England Patriots quarterback Mac Jones says he has no problem having “hard conversations” with his coaching staff. That’s good news, considering recent weeks have been full of them.
After dropping their second-consecutive game Thursday, the Patriots got a much-needed weekend off after playing three games in 18 days. During that time off, everyone else around New England prognosticated about what exactly the Patriots’ problem is offensively. Can the blame be placed on Jones? Is it more so on Matt Patricia and his uninspiring playcalling? Is it on head coach Bill Belichick for sticking to his guns and allowing the former two men to continue in their current roles?
With those questions swirling, Jones took part in his weekly interview on WEEI’s “Merloni, Fauria & Mego” — acknowledging that passing off blame isn’t something the triumvirate of Jones, Patricia and Belichick are interested in.
“We’re all super competitive. Any time it doesn’t look good on film, we want to be coached hard,” Jones said, per WEEI. “That’s what our coaches are going to do. It’s everybody being accountable. That’s the definition of tough coaching — it’s hard conversions. If something may have not gotten right with a player, ‘Hey, you did this wrong.’ As a player, it’s, ‘OK, how can I fix it?’ I think our coaches have done that and we have to lock into that and ‘Alright, what’s the problem and how can I solve it?’
“When you watch the tape, we’re close. We’ve just got to eliminate those (bad plays) at this point. There are a few plays in every game — a handful of plays that just aren’t very good. Once we can fix those then everything goes. We understand it’s us the player. We have to trust the coaches, which we are. They put a lot of hard work into it. That’s what we have to do. It’s a player’s game. We want to come together and play together.”
The weekend seemed to be good for Jones, who had some eye-opening words in the immediate aftermath of New England’s loss to the Buffalo Bills on Thursday — following up a sideline tirade with a rarely seen performance at the podium. He wasn’t the only Patriot to offer up some reality, however, as Kendrick Bourne seemingly laid it all out in his postgame availability. Despite some thought the debacle at the hands of Buffalo could lead to some change at One Patriot Place, things seem to be chugging along as usual.
“Those are conversations that we have and that’s internal and you want to be able to have those with your position coach or Matty P, coach Belichick, coach Judge,” Jones said. “It’s not fun at the time. Like, ‘Hey, you didn’t do this right or it didn’t look as good in practice.’ You have to have (those conversions). I feel like we have to do that more often and work through the problems. There’s obviously things we want to get better at, but that’s part of life… We’re all on the same page in that regard.”
Being on the same page sounds nice, but the reality is the Patriots offense will have to show it before anyone believes them. A matchup with the Arizona Cardinals on Monday night may do just that.
