When it comes to the Patriots’ quarterback situation, two things can be true:
a) Mac Jones played with composure to give his team a reasonable chance to beat the reigning NFL champions in a primetime downpour
b) An outsized chunk of New England’s biggest passing plays were thrown by a wide receiver
Jones earned widespread praise for keeping New England competitive in its eventual 19-17 loss to Tom Brady and the Buccaneers in Week 4. He threw for 275 yards and a pair of touchdowns despite inclement weather and a patchwork offensive line. He drove the Pats into range for a potential game-winning field goal with 57 seconds left — even though we all know giving Brady the ball back with that much time was effectively a death sentence anyway.
He also only threw one pass that traveled more than 20 yards downfield against a ragged secondary. It was intercepted. Twenty-three of his 40 passes came within five yards of the line of scrimmage. His 5.3 air yards per attempt vs. Tampa would rank second-lowest among all NFL starting QBs this season, beating out only Andy Dalton.
So what’s the verdict? Is Jones, four games into his career the stoic general capable of leading New England out of the wilderness and back to the top of the AFC East? Or is he simply a re-skinned Alex Smith, checking down for four-yard gains and operating an offense that’s doomed if it gets knocked off schedule by a negative play?
As you can probably figure, he’s a little of both.
Jones executed Bill Belichick’s “new QB” playbook excellently
Bill Belichick’s track record of developing quarterbacks in New England is limited, mostly because he had the winningest passer in league history on his roster for two decades. He helped mold some potential Brady replacements into usable starters (Jimmy Garoppolo, Jacoby Brissett) and allowed others to play down to their mid- or late-round draft status (Ryan Mallett, Kevin O’Connell, Jarrett Stidham probably).
He’s rarely had to throw an inexperienced quarterback into the fire for an extended period. It’s easy to make the comparison to the last accurate, comparatively un-athletic quarterback from a blue-blood college program who got his number called after a short pro runway and won way more games than expected.
That’s right, Matt Cassel.
Cassel led New England to 11 wins in 2008 after Brady tore his ACL barely two quarters into the season. He was broken in slowly before eventually settling into more pass-heavy schemes that featured more downfield throws. A look at the two passers through their first four games of extended action paints a similar picture:
Sometimes the Patriots won in spite of Cassel. Others they won because of him. Jones will have to deal with the same variance as a rookie.
There’s a noticeable jump when Belichick took the governor off his passing game engine in Game 10; suddenly Cassel had the green light. He rose from 30 passes per game to 40+ (not counting a Week 17 win over Buffalo in which he only threw eight passes in a glorified exhibition), tripled his touchdown count for the season in a six-game span (from seven to 21), had back to back 400-yard, three-touchdown performances, and led the Pats to a 5-2 finish that still, somehow, ended outside the playoff bracket.
Time will tell if Belichick is building his latest project up in a similar way, but early returns are positive. Jones frequently showcased the traits of a good NFL quarterback in a pressure-filled situation against his new team’s ex. He kept his eyes downfield, progressed through his reads efficiently, and made tight throws to the right targets even if that meant passing up a riskier, more rewarding play downfield.
Jones executed a game plan designed to limit his time in the pocket. While he rarely tested the waters downfield, his accuracy managed to keep New England moving forward. The Patriots were in position to win this game despite getting one net yard of rushing offense, which is absolutely wild.
Even his interception — Jones’ lone 20+ yard deep ball of the night — came on third-and-long, in the face of pressure, and was an on-target throw that was only picked off after being tipped. Still, we’ve gotta focus on that. Only one downfield shot against this Buccaneers team? Really?
Jones failed to exploit Tampa’s leaky secondary
Ultimately Jones wasn’t the reason New England lost on Sunday night. He didn’t fumble away a scoring opportunity inside Bucs territory like JJ Taylor. He wasn’t a part of the championship caliber defense that allowed Brady to lead two lead-taking drives in the final eight minutes.
But Jones also wasn’t the guy Belichick turned to with the game on the line on 4th-and-3 at the Tampa 36. And he wasn’t the guy capable of capitalizing on a Bucs defense that had given up a league-worst 326 passing yards per game heading into Week 4. Opponents had attempted 17 passes that traveled 15+ yards through the air vs. the Tampa defense. They’d completed 10 of them for three touchdowns with zero interceptions.
Jones only took three such shots downfield. Why?
Tampa’s front seven is loaded with talent, but that hadn’t translated into pass rushing production in its first three games. The team’s 15.7 percent pressure rate was fourth-lowest in the NFL coming into Sunday night’s game. Only one in 50 opponent dropbacks ended in a Buccaneer sack — the worst rate in pro football.
Jones managed to more than double Tampa’s sack total by going down a career-high four times in the pocket. These happened on three different drives, each of which ended in a punt. Even though Jones dropped his time in the pocket down to a season-best 2.5 seconds, the Bucs were still able to get to him and terminate drives in their larval stage. This led to more short passes, which of course exacerbated the issue of Jones’ lack of downfield throws.
Jones’ modus operandi through both the preseason and his four-game stretch as a starter in real games has been to progress quickly through his reads, arriving at his short-route targets before anything can go wrong. This leads to modest gains, but it also cuts off developing routes if they aren’t open immediately. New England paid entirely too much to secure Nelson Agholor’s deep-ball services, but he’s been used mostly as an intermediate threat — his 8.8 yards before catch are down significantly from last year’s 13.9 number. The same goes for the Pats’ other top wideouts Jakobi Meyers and Kendrick Bourne.
That’s a problem in an NFL where spamming vertical routes has crept into offenses like kudzu. Jones is a low-risk, low-reward quarterback in an era where those guys are increasingly rare. He’s got to prove the patience he’s applied to running down his route checklist can translate to looking off a deep safety and waiting for a guy like Agholor to break free 40 yards downfield.
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Where does that leave us? With a quarterback who isn’t quite as good as last night’s hype suggests and better than most people jumping in with “ov-er-rat-ed” chants have considered. Jones is executing the game plan Belichick wants, building confidence by showcasing all the outs available when he’s in trouble. If nothing else, that’s a skill that he can lean on as a starting quarterback in the NFL.
It’s not enough to carry him to the league’s upper tier in an era of explosive quarterbacking. Mac Jones has composure, and that’s great. What he doesn’t have yet is a consistent deep ball. That’s a problem … but as history’s shown with Belichick and his young quarterbacks, it’s a fixable one.