The Patriots’ problems go well beyond Mac Jones
The entire Patriot roster is a mess, a truth that becomes more and more evident each week.
Patriots
COMMENTARY
Before everybody starts investing too heavily in the list of “can’t-miss” quarterback prospects that should be available in next spring’s NFL draft, let’s take a look at how the much-ballyhooed draft class of 2021 combined to fare on Sunday. Trevor Lawrence, Zach Wilson, and Mac Jones were a combined 55 of 88, throwing for an average of 206 yards with no touchdowns and four interceptions.
In football terms, yuck.
The No. 1 pick from that class, Jacksonville’s Lawrence, was brutal against the San Francisco 49ers, a 34-3 shellacking during which Lawrence was sacked five times. Trey Lance hasn’t thrown the football once this season. Justin Fields is hurt. Again. Wilson only has his job because Aaron Rodgers joined the Jets and Jets things immediately happened.
We can assume, based on the way things went for the Patriots in Germany, that Mac Jones has become the latest quarterback from that draft class to lose his job as a starting quarterback in the NFL.
Jones didn’t even get to finish Sunday’s 10-6 loss to the Indianapolis Colts, lending the field for the Patriots’ final possession so that backup Bailey Zappe could deliver his best Jones impression, throwing an interception to seal the deal in the final moments of the contest. It was the second most-memorable interception by a Patriots quarterback that day (Jones’s bizarre, off-balance throw to the Colts’ Julian Blackmon takes that honor), but not the most memorable throw. That would be Jones’s underhand horseshoe toss that finally allowed offensive coordinator Bill O’Brien to release all the anger he’d been letting simmer since training camp began way back in July. Cameras caught O’Brien laying into Jones on the sideline after that particular decision. If you missed it, let’s say that Tony Soprano seemed less demonstrative about his anger during Gloria Trillo’s final moments than O’Brien did with his quarterback on Sunday.
New England is now 2-8. Mac Jones has been benched three times this season.
There can’t be a fourth.
The only way Jones will see more action in a Patriots uniform this season is if Zappe gets injured and Will Grier is stuck in winter traffic without a Jetsons mobile to get him to practice. This has finally gotten to the point of being unrepairable, which might have been the case all along anyway.
Jones might spend the rest of his career as an NFL backup, but let’s hope that wherever he does it they understand the absolute need to create football nirvana around the guy. Instead, ever since “making” the Pro Bowl after his rookie season, Jones has become a football Ziggy; every time he touches the football, things just keep getting worse.
Head coach Bill Belichick, either via intention or neglect, helped to ruin the kid, to the point where 10 games into his third season, the New England Patriots do not have a viable starter to take the field in two weeks against the New York Giants, an opponent that, oddly enough, has the same problem.
Maybe Jones can latch on elsewhere, but it seemed even his biggest cheerleader, team owner Robert Kraft, saw the light of reality in Germany. When Jones overthrew tight end Hunter Henry in the end zone Sunday, cameras caught Kraft, clad in a Costanza-worthy puffy coat, bowing his head in disappointment the same way most of us look when we’re reminded that we forgot the milk on our way home.
No matter how team-friendly that option is on Jones’s contract, maybe Robert finally succumbed to the reality people have been trying to lay out to him for close to three years now: Jones ain’t the guy.
However, finding the next one isn’t as easy as promoting Tankathon 2023. The entire Patriot roster is a mess, a truth that becomes more and more evident each week during this lost NFL campaign. Plug Caleb Williams into this equation and the Patriots will just raze him as well as the next guy. That means the football nerds (and wanna-be’s) might have a point with all the Joe Alt discussion, drafting from the foundation of the offensive line on up.
The team needs to build from scratch. The first step in fixing things might be to make a draft move about as boring as Richard Seymour seemed more than two decades ago. Seymour went on to the Hall of Fame. David Terrell, the wide receiver many thought the team should have taken with the sixth pick in lieu of Seymour, played in 53 games with the Chicago Bears. He is not in the Hall of Fame.
The Patriots indeed need a quarterback. Two, even. But they have so many holes and problems that to address that position, first and foremost, might be like digging a hole in the sand. You think Caleb Williams, who has already proven himself to be a bit of a diva, might not think about another year at USC if this is what the real world looks like?
Besides Trevor Lawrence, none of the first-round picks from that year may have jobs in 2024. It all makes you wonder if you should start listening to different people when you’re trying to correct things from the bottom. Which is where and why Belichick’s future with the team should be presumed over. You can’t fix things without replacing the guy who bought the groceries in the first place.
The Patriots are broken and the repair is going to take years.
Until then, enjoy Zappe 2.0. Tickets for all remaining home games are still available.
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