Tom Curran gave a strong rebuttal to the idea of the Patriots parting with Mac Jones
NBC Sports Boston's Curran sees no way that Mac Jones is traded before 2024.
On Wednesday, NBC Sports Boston’s Tom Curran joined the Rich Eisen Show to discuss the future of Mac Jones and the Patriots offense.
Eisen asked if the Patriots would be involved in the quarterback carousel this spring, potentially moving on from Jones after a disappointing second year, and Curran provided him with a firm no.
“Absolutely, positively not,” Curran said. “That would happen over Robert Kraft’s dead body. We’ll talk about that in 2024 if it’s another mediocre season. But this notion that the Patriots would move on from Mac Jones after last July at the outset of training camp when Bill Belichick talked about Mac Jones making a drastic improvement from an already highly impressive rookie year — if they now want to move on from him and his $4.36 million salary or whatever it is because of what happened in 2022, who’s holding the smoking gun for what happened? That coach! The decisions.”
“The Patriots owe Mac Jones and themselves the opportunity to see what they have in the 15th overall pick,” Curran said.
Last season Jones did struggle on the field and at some points was forced off of it by injuries. The offense stalled under play-callers Matt Patricia and Joe Judge, and Jones finished under 3,000 passing yards with just 14 touchdown passes after earning a Pro Bowl selection and coming in second in offensive rookie of the year voting in 2021.
In an attempt to rectify last year’s mistakes, the Patriots relieved Patricia and Judge of their offensive duties and hired Bill O’Brien to be the team’s next offensive coordinator.
After discussing Jones’s future with the team, Eisen asked Curran what he thought O’Brien would bring to the Patriots this season.
“He brings a plumber to fix a sink as opposed to a Finnish carpenter which the Patriots tried to have two of last year,” Curran said.
When it came to Jones in particular, who already has connections with O’Brien, Curran believes the coach can solve some of the communication problems that Jones faced with the play-callers last season.
“[Last year] they wouldn’t give [Jones] the answers to the test as to if this happens what am I doing,” Curtain said. “The combination of Patricia, Judge and [Belichick] really, were unable to really articulate, ‘okay this is the next level stuff, this is what we’ll do if we see this’… O’Brien will help [Jones] with those things and help shepherd him through that which is really what you need.”
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