Patriots Haven’t Told Mac Jones If He’ll Keep Starting Job, QB Says

Will Mac Jones keep his starting job when the New England Patriots return from their bye week? Bill Belichick won’t say, and Jones said he doesn’t know.

The third-year quarterback said Tuesday on WEEI’s “Jones & Mego with Arcand” that he hadn’t been told whether he will start next Sunday against the New York Giants.

“No, we haven’t talked about that,” Jones said. “Really just today, we watched the game film and kind of talked about the plans for the bye week. We have practice (on Wednesday), so just see how it goes there. The bye week’s a great time to work on things you can do better, so that’s what I’m going to do.”

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The Patriots are scheduled to practice Wednesday — their first since returning from Sunday’s 10-6 loss to the Indianapolis Colts in Frankfurt, Germany — before giving players Thursday through Sunday off for the bye.

Jones, who was benched for backup Bailey Zappe in the final minutes of that loss, was asked when he expected to hear about New England’s QB plan for the Giants game.

“I really am not focusing on that,” Jones said. “I’m really just focusing on things I can control, and focus on that. I’ve always done that. I really need to improve, obviously, and that’s what I’m going to focus on.”

Sunday’s benching was Jones’ third of the season, but the circumstances were markedly different from the first two. Those both came late in blowout losses. His latest removal came before the final drive of a one-score game, with Belichick giving Jones the hook after he threw an egregious red-zone interception with 4:38 remaining.

Jones said on WEEI that he’d never been benched in a situation like that before. Zappe stepped in, completed 3 of 7 passes and threw an interception to end the game.

If Belichick does plan to permanently bench Jones, his options to replace him would be Zappe, veteran third-stringer Will Grier and undrafted rookie Malik Cunningham, who splits his time between QB and receiver on the practice squad.

“We got a lot of things to work on this week as a team, and we’ll work through those,” Belichick said Tuesday morning in a video conference. “So, that’s what we’re going to do this week.”