Why Bill O’Brien Still Believes In Mac Jones After Terrible Game

A lot of people are ready to give up on Mac Jones, but Bill O’Brien isn’t there yet.

Jones was terrible in Sunday’s road loss to the Dallas Cowboys, committing three turnovers before getting benched for Bailey Zappe in the third quarter. The third-year quarterback played with a level of panic that he hadn’t shown previously in his young career.

Bill Belichick said Jones will start this Sunday when New England hosts the New Orleans Saints. But many Patriots fans — and some national pundits — believe the franchise should pull the plug. As such, it’ll be another rough week for one of the more heavily scrutinized players in the NFL.

But O’Brien believes Jones will meet the challenge.

“Mac is a battler,” the Patriots offensive coordinator said during a Tuesday video call.” He is a competitor. When you play quarterback in this league, you have to limit the mistakes and you have to limit the bad games you have, obviously. We’re all in it together. We have to do a better job of coaching up some things with him. He has to do a better job of making good decisions for us. He knows that. He takes a lot of ownership — you guys saw that, I think, after the game.

“He blames himself. The game wasn’t lost because of one guy. The game was lost, on our part, because of how poorly we played and coached in the game. Mac is here today, he’s working very hard to get back on the right track. We have a lot of belief in Mac.”

The most alarming part of Jones’ performance was his atypically poor decision-making. Normally, his mind is his greatest asset. But as Sunday’s game unraveled on the Patriots, so, too, did Jones’ composure.

O’Brien was surprised to see it. But he’d also be surprised to see Jones repeat it.

“You always have to play mentally within yourself,” O’Brien said. “It doesn’t mean that you can’t take calculated risks, it doesn’t mean that when something opens up — and you’re not necessarily a runner — that you can’t take off and run. It just means that you have to do a really good job of making sure that you understand what we’re trying to do on every play and executing that play to the best of your ability at a high level — and take what the defense gives you. And, really, I would say for the most part Mac does that. I think that’s, again, where we have to work together. We’re going to work really hard this week to improve some things.

“But I thought that last game, for Mac, some of the decisions that he made were very uncharacteristic of Mac. I think he’ll get back to doing it the way he knows how to do it. He’s just trying to make a play, he’s wanting to win, he’s very competitive. Maybe the plays weren’t great. So I have to be involved in that, big-time, with him. I understand that. I think you’ll see a lot of improvement in Mac as we keep moving forward here.”

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O’Brien’s faith in Jones is somewhat justified. Jones might not be an elite quarterback, but he’s far better than the player we saw Sunday.

That said, can he ever become, say, a top-10 quarterback? That remains to be seen — and Jones is running out of time to prove it.

He’ll look to get back on track Sunday when the Patriots play the Saints. If he struggles again, all bets are off.