NFL Analyst Defends Mac Jones, Wants New Patriots Play Caller

The New England Patriots offseason will be filled with a litany of questions, chief among them being how they can make improvements to an, at-best, mediocre offensive unit.

Depending on where you look for answers, two ideas will likely be floated regarding how those improvements can be made. Make a change at offensive play-caller, replacing Matt Patricia after a disastrous season full of second guesses from personnel and disappointing quarterback play from Mac Jones, or stay the course while making improvements to said personnel in hopes that things can improve with more time.

ESPN analyst and former NFL quarterback Dan Orlovsky can be filed under the former.

“There has to be a coordinator change,” Orlovsky said Tuesday on “NFL Live.” “(It has to be) somebody that has a strong history of calling plays in the NFL. Kliff Kingsbury could be an option. Bill O’Brien, who is at Alabama and was at New England, should be the option.”

Kingsbury and O’Brien seem to be the top options for prognosticators out there, as both men have history in New England. That doesn’t fully tell the story of why Orlovsky wants the Patriots to hire one of them, however. It all falls back to the dynamic between Jones and Patricia.

“I want to make a very clear point about the difference in my eyes from Mac Jones last year to this year,” Orlovsky continued. “It has to do with an exclamation point and a question mark. Last year, Mac understood the ‘why’ with an exclamation point… This year he was was asking ‘why’ with a question mark.”

In plain English, Orlovsky believes the Patriots’ second-year QB was questioning Patricia’s decision making whereas he fully understood Josh McDaniels’ in 2021.

The belief is things would become much easier to understand for Jones and the Patriots offense with a seasoned play caller. Hence the insistence on placing names like Kingsbury and O’Brien back in New England this offseason. Only time will tell if one of those hirings actually happens.