What the AFC’s quarterback explosion means for Mac Jones and the Patriots
As he heads into a crucial second season, Patriots quarterback Mac Jones comes into 2022 well down the list at his position within the AFC.
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Without having played a single snap yet in 2022, the Patriots find the odds being stacked more heavily against them in the AFC seemingly by the day.
With the addition of former MVP Matt Ryan to the Indianapolis Colts via trade on Monday, three new star quarterbacks have now entered the conference — Ryan, Russell Wilson (Denver Broncos), and Deshaun Watson (Cleveland Browns). On top of that, the Broncos and Browns also made significant moves to upgrade outside of quarterback to bolster their playoff chances.
While none of those players and teams will compete with the Patriots directly in the AFC East, the AFC’s growing strength will make the battle for the conference’s seven playoff spots even more bitter than it was a year ago.
On one hand, the Patriots have one of the most coveted assets in all of sports: a good quarterback on a rookie contract. Mac Jones’s top-notch rookie season maximized last year’s free-agent spending spree and still gives New England the ability to spend in other places to support him (though they haven’t done much of that in free agency this year).
Yet the fact remains that, as good as Jones is, him simply making a second-year leap might not be enough to make this team a true championship contender as currently constructed. Not anymore.
Obviously, there are more players on football fields than just quarterbacks. Supporting casts matter, too, and the Patriots have a solid team, all things considered. In fact, Jones had one of the best team situations of any quarterback and by far the best of any rookie passer last season.
But when all things are largely equal, having the better quarterback matters. Unfortunately, the Patriots likely won’t have that advantage in the games that matter most in 2022.
Let’s start with the obvious beast in the AFC East Jones has to contend with: Josh Allen.
The gap between Jones and the Bills’ budding superstar quarterback isn’t just due to the former being a rookie in the NFL. Allen came into the league with abilities Jones could only dream of, and he’s arguably just scratching the surface of his immense talent. The idea of Jones ever reaching what Allen’s doing seems far-fetched.
Outside of the division, things get even scarier.
The Patriots fortunately only face one AFC West team this season — the Los Vegas Raiders, who are now coached by old friend Josh McDaniels. But the probability that the Patriots will run into at least one AFC West team in the playoffs feels astronomically high given the quarterback talent at that division.
Patrick Mahomes obviously sits atop that roost at the moment due both to his skills and the strength of his resume. Justin Herbert’s star is rapidly ascending to reach Mahomes’s stratosphere, and it wouldn’t be surprising to see the Chargers passer widely viewed as a top-five quarterback in football by the end of next year. Derek Carr took his game to another level last season and now has McDaniels and Davante Adams at his disposal.
Then, throw Russell Wilson into the mix after the Seattle Seahawks traded him to the Denver Broncos, and you have one of the wildest divisions the NFL has ever seen.
Quietly right behind the West in terms of quarterback talent is the AFC North, which the Patriots will play in its entirety in 2022.
Everyone saw the meteoric rise of Joe Burrow in real-time last season as he led the Bengals to the Super Bowl. Lamar Jackson is an MVP and would’ve been in the running for the award again in 2021 if he hadn’t gotten hurt and missed the home stretch of the season. The Browns will look a lot different when New England players them this year with Deshaun Watson versus Baker Mayfield (assuming he isn’t suspended by the league due to his pending civil suits for sexual harassment). And there’s Mitchell Trubisky. Maybe. We’ll see about that.
Aside from Trubisky, it’s hard to make a credible argument Jones is better right now than any of the aforementioned quarterbacks. It’s possible he makes a leap big enough to call that into question by the end of 2022. But at the moment, he’s starting out as the eighth-best quarterback in the AFC at best.
Then there are arguments to be made about the likes of the two “Ryans” — Ryan Tannehill and Matt Ryan.
If you look at the raw numbers as well as advanced analytics like estimated points added (EPA) per play, Jones edged out Tannehill last season in leaderboards. Though Tannehill certainly deserves credit for keeping the Titans as the AFC’s top seed after Derrick Henry went down in Week 8, there isn’t much reason to place Tannehill over Jones based on anything but “experience.” That’s not going to matter much with Jones about to go through his second NFL season.
Matt Ryan is perhaps another matter. As much as his numbers tailed off last season with a bad Falcons team, he’d been a 4,000-yard passer in each of the 10 years before that and might well have some good play left for a playoff-caliber Colts squad. Again, simply comparing their play in 2021 skews things easily in Jones’s favor, but it wouldn’t be surprising to see Ryan outperform that down year (and Jones) in 2022.
However you slice it, the Patriots are in a far-from-ideal place when it comes to their long-term outlook. That’s not Jones’s fault. He had one of the best seasons a rookie quarterback’s ever had in 2021, and, contrary to cynics, there’s strong reason to believe he can noticeably improve this coming season.
It just might not be enough in a conference this loaded with quarterback talent. Jones would likely have to start playing like a mid-career version of Tom Brady right now in order to make a dent in this hierarchy and thereby catapult the Patriots into Super Bowl contender discussions, and that’s not a fair ask.
Of course, as unfair as that might be, some hard questions will inevitably start coming up about Jones’s future with the Patriots if he can’t help New England cut through the static soon.
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