In Defense Of Mac Jones Amid Another Rough Week For Patriots QB

The Mac Jones bandwagon is mostly empty after his career-worst performance in Dallas. Football fans in Foxboro and beyond have seen enough from the third-year quarterback, and believe the Patriots should move on.

But is the hysteria justified? We don’t think so — not yet, anyway.

For myriad reasons, people really seem to not like Jones. Be it his Alabama background, his penchant for cheap shots or his generally bland style of play, Jones has struggled to gain supporters in New England since being drafted 15th overall in 2021.

However, more than anything, people are convinced he flat-out stinks. He’s not just a poor Tom Brady heir, he’s a poor NFL quarterback period. You don’t have to turn your radio knob for too long before hearing someone in a Boston accent yell, “This kid is terr-ah-ble!”

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But this stuff still feels completely detached from reality. It feels like something fans simply want to believe, either because they’re petrified of life post-Brady, scared to criticize Bill Belichick or just don’t like the way Jones looks and acts, or whatever.

And so, for those people, Jones’ putrid, three-turnover game against the Cowboys on Sunday served as the latest evidence that he’s gottah go. People want a second wave of “Zappe Fever“. One Boston radio host even suggested the Patriots should pursue Jacoby Brissett.

It’s the same kind of agenda-driven confirmation bias that results in weird Facebook posts like this:

Or over-the-top, dubious rants like this:

Or pass-the-buck columns like this:

Tom Curran tried to warn me that this column idea was dumb, but I wrote it anyway. https://t.co/GiSHK4pohd

— John Tomase (@jtomase) October 4, 2023

We’re not here to absolve Jones of blame for how he played against the Cowboys. Nor are we saying he’s the clear-cut quarterback of the future in New England. He gave his team zero chance to win in Dallas, and the jury very much is out on whether he’s Franchise-QB material.

And, if we’re being fair, the Patriots now have to be closer to a post-Jones world than they were a week ago. He played that out of control at AT&T Stadium.

However, the reaction to Jones’ game has totally jumped the shark. All context and reason have been thrown out the window and left on the side of I-95 with all the other junk you find on that hellscape.

So, let’s get into our three-pronged defense of a player who’s not finding much of it this week.

These games happen to all quarterbacks
People act like Jones had one of the worst games for a quarterback in NFL history. A performance so bad that there’s no coming back from it. But none of that is true.

Jones threw two interceptions and fumbled once while posting a passer rating of 39.9, the second-worst of his career unless you count last season’s abbreviated failure against the Chicago Bears. It also marked his sixth game with multiple interceptions (his career-high is three).

Consider this: Brady had two games with a worse passer rating, and one with basically the same. He also had 49 games with at least two picks, including 11 within his first three seasons as the starter. Brady also had six games with four picks. And that 35-point deficit Jones contributed to? Brady was on the field for Patriots losses of 31, 27, 25, 24, 20, 19 and 16 points — and most of those came against middling teams or worse.

But let’s leave Brady out of it.

Trevor Lawrence, the first pick in Jones’ draft class, has two games with a worse passer rating and seven games with multiple interceptions. Tua Tagovailoa, who really is the reverse of Jones in that people want to believe he’s better than he is, has one game with a 40.6 passer rating and six games with at least two picks

Josh Allen? He’s got three games with a worse passer rating and 19 games with multiple interceptions. He also has 16 games with a passer rating lower than 70, compared to six for Jones. And Dak Prescott, who actually might represent the ceiling for Jones, has one game with a worse passer rating and 18 games with multiple picks.

We could go on and on with this. However, there obviously is another side of the coin.

Somewhere along the line, all of the above quarterbacks also demonstrated an ability to play at an elite level, and all except Tagovailoa have at least one playoff victory. Jones has neither of those things. His lows haven’t been all that low, but his highs also haven’t been very high.

Plus, the eye test must count for something. You don’t even need to squint to see a fair statistical comparison between Jones and Lawrence. The former has 10 games with a passer rating greater than 100, the latter has 11. And many of their traditional stats line up.

Can’t lie… this caught me a little off guard.

(📷: pick.6/IG) pic.twitter.com/iaXyu4ztjO

— JPAFootball (@jasrifootball) September 29, 2023

However, nobody in their right mind would suggest that Jones is as talented as Lawrence. He’s not. He rarely makes the kind of “wow” plays that Lawrence makes nearly every week.

And therein lies the core of the Jones hate: We haven’t seen him take his game to a higher level. He still is in search of his signature, I’ve-arrived game. Maybe it never will come.

But there also isn’t nearly enough data to suggest he’s a bad NFL quarterback. You can’t use his performance against the Cowboys, because there simply are too many examples of better quarterbacks playing even worse. It happens.

He had no chance against Dallas.
Some believe Jones and Jones alone painted the picture of what happened in Dallas. But the reality is the most lopsided loss in Belichick’s career was a mosaic of ineptitude, especially on offense.

Patriots pass-catchers averaged 2.05 yards of separation, well below the league average of 2.94 yards, per the NFL’s Next Gen Stats. Dallas’ pass-catchers averaged 3.22 yards of separation, and that group isn’t even that good outside of CeeDee Lamb.

It was even worse against man coverage, with New England averaging 1.6 yards of separation, per Patriots.com’s Evan Lazar. The league average is 2.5.

But the biggest problems were on the offensive line. Per Next Gen, Jones was pressured on over 52% of passes. That’s an absolutely preposterous number, one even Brady or Patrick Mahomes couldn’t overcome. You’re not winning a game where you’re pressured on over half of the plays, your receivers can’t get open and the running backs have no open lanes.

And the Cowboys, led by defensive coordinator Dan Quinn, knew it.

They played up on Patriots receivers knowing they couldn’t get open. They put Micah Parsons over Vederian Lowe, rightfully predicting Lowe would have one of the worst games you’ll ever see from a right tackle. They had defensive backs squatting on routes because they knew the Patriots didn’t have the receivers or protection required to pull off big plays.

Again, Jones deserves some of the blame. Things were going reasonably well until he was strip-sacked near his own goal line — then he completely unraveled. The whole thing was a house of cards, but he was the first one to fall. And his inability to turn things around at any point was concerning.

But few, if any, quarterbacks would’ve fared better in that game. He was set up to fail.

Blame Belichick
That brings us to the person who really should be in the crosshairs: Belichick.

We went more in-depth on this topic in a previous story, which you can read by clicking here. But the point is that New England is 26-29 since Brady left, a record that Belichick is responsible for.

He spent a ton of money on so-so free agents in 2021. He let Matt Patricia torpedo Jones’ development in 2022. He failed to address the offensive line issues last offseason. He declined to give Jones any top-tier weapons to work with. In fact, he took Jones’ favorite, target, Jakobi Meyers, and replaced him with JuJu Smith-Schuster, who might have nothing left.

If you’re going to roll with a traditional pocket passer, you need to have good tackle play and receivers who can get open. Belichick gave Jones neither of those things.

Of course, he wasn’t nearly as neglectful of his real pride and joys: defense and special teams.

Belichick used his first three draft picks on defensive players (all of whom look great, to be fair). He spent the money necessary to make sure basically everyone from last season came back. He also spent real money on a specialist, traded up for a kicker, drafted a punter and moved Joe Judge back to special teams.

He wasn’t going to get caught short-handed on defense or in the kicking game. But offense? He basically put everything on Bill O’Brien’s plate and said, “Here, you figure it out.”

So far, nobody is figuring it out. And the blame should start with Belichick.

Jones has to start playing better, and in a hurry. There’s no way around it.

The Patriots need to make a decision on his fifth-year option next offseason, and if his play doesn’t improve, they won’t be able to justify picking it up. Regardless of whether Jones is a byproduct of greater failures, he shouldn’t get more than three seasons to prove himself.

This year is the referendum. And it’s not off to a good start. Furthermore, all bets are off if Jones doesn’t play better this Sunday against the New Orleans Saints.

But the verdict still isn’t in for a quarterback who played was above average as a rookie, got screwed as a sophomore and played well the first three weeks of this season. At this juncture, Jones’ performance against the Cowboys is an outlier, whether fans want to believe it or not.

He just can’t repeat it.