Last week, after a minicamp heading into his third year with the New England Patriots — a season with no more clarity on how it will all turn out then his first — Mac Jones was asked if he would like to tell his various critics to simply “shut the F up.”
Jones just laughed.
“Yeah, we’ll see,” the quarterback said. “I mean, that’s a lot of emotion, right? I think everyone’s entitled to an opinion. All I can do [is] I’m going to run my race, and hopefully everybody will run right behind me. We’ll be able to push this thing along and learn from everything. I’m going to do everything I can to earn the respect of everybody in this building again, and from there, go out there and win some games.”
The key word in all of that was “again,” the implication being that Jones isn’t certain that he has, or didn’t have at all times last season, the full respect of everyone in Foxborough. Or maybe it’s a reminder that he needs to earn it every single season.
Whatever he precisely meant, Jones will enter the fall with plenty to prove, inside and outside Gillette Stadium.
In 2021, he was drafted 15th overall out of the University of Alabama as a potential Tom Brady replacement.
That first training camp he beat out Cam Newton for the Week 1 starting job. He showed enough as a rookie that at least some fans, if not Patriot coaches and executives, believed they had uncovered another quarterback savior. No, not to the tune of a Brady-esque six Super Bowls, but he looked like a franchise guy.
Then came an erratic and at times uncertain second year. Jones wasn’t terrible, but he also wasn’t trending in the right direction. Detractors saw limitations. Supporters cited bad coaching with no named offensive coordinator.
Whatever the cause, the numbers were the numbers. Completion percentage, yards per attempt, touchdowns, touchdown to interception ratio, passer rating … pretty much you name it, it was down. The Pats went just 8-9.
Beyond the statistics, Jones looked stiff at times on the field, and scripted in his answers off of it.
If nothing else last week, he was able to laugh at a couple of questions and answer a series of them with a measure of comfort. Meaningless? Probably. It isn’t going to help beat Buffalo. But in the desert days of spring, you take any indignation of progress you can get.
“I think every year is a great year to just stay positive and try and gain confidence,” Jones said. “Everyone that I’ve talked to that’s either been in year three or older, they say, ‘Just keep working and build the confidence through your reps.’ It’s not just confidence from last year, the year before, college, it’s my whole life. So, just continue to do that and working, and doing all the right things.”
He even tried to spin last season’s struggles into a positive.
“Confidence comes from years of practice and doing well, and also not doing well,” Jones said. “Sometimes the most confident people come from a year where they might not have been their best, and I feel like that’s where I’m at. We all feel like that, so we’re all hungry. Confidence comes with time, but it’s also something that you can look back on too, not just worrying about things that happened in the past, but also focusing on the future.”
There is no telling what Bill Belichick’s long-term plan is for Jones. It probably hinges on this season. Even Belichick’s job security isn’t assured, at least if you listen to the continued frustrations of team owner Robert Kraft.
To say the Belichick empire (or when the end of the empire arrives) rests on Jones’ passing arm and decision making might not be fair, but it also might be true.
It’s not just his viability as a NFL starter on the line here.
“I think every year is a new year, right?” Jones said. “It’s a lot easier to say that after you have a really good year. Obviously, our goal is to win every game that we play in, and learn how to do that. I think some of the learning experiences I had last year will really help.
“There’s a lot of things I could do better,” he continued. “I know that as a person, as a player, there’s things I could grow upon. But, really it’s about this year. … I’m going to run my own race, and look up at the end and see where I’m at. I think everyone else should do that, too.”
He has a new offensive coordinator in Bill O’Brien, who returns to the Patriots after head coaching stints at Penn State, the Houston Texans and two years as an assistant at Alabama. The two didn’t cross paths in Tuscaloosa, but that hardly matters. O’Brien is a real OC. He’s worked with Brady and DeShaun Watson. He should be an upgrade from last year’s Matt Patricia experiment, where a defensive-minded coach tried to run the offense.
Really though, this has to be on Jones. The roster isn’t perfect. The situation isn’t either. That’s life in the NFL.
Here in year three though, the Patriots season will hinge on whether he finds a way to overcome the deficiencies in a brutally competitive AFC East or if his play contributes to any shortcomings.
He was a first-rounder, not a 199th overall gamble like Brady. He was anointed an immediate starter. Much is expected. Much hasn’t been consistently produced.
Now is the time for Mac Jones to tell everyone to shut up, whether it’s the specific language he wants to use or not. If nothing else, it seems like he knows it.
