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Six things that led to Mac Jones’ downfall with the Patriots
Jones went 8-17 over his final 25 games with the Patriots.
The Mac Jones era has come to an end in Foxborough.
The Patriots reportedly traded the 25-year-old quarterback to the Jacksonville Jaguars for a sixth-round pick, giving the former first-round pick a fresh start after two miserable seasons in New England.
It’s far from an unexpected result for the Patriots, especially after benching Jones for the final stretch of the 2023 season. But it’s a disheartening outcome for a QB who opened his NFL career with so much promise.
New England made the playoffs in Jones’ first season running the offense.
After winning the starting QB gig in training camp over Cam Newton in 2021, Jones completed 67.6 percent of his passes for 3,801 yards, 22 touchdowns, and 13 interceptions with a 92.5 passer rating in 2021.
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He earned a Pro Bowl nod for his efforts and finished second behind Bengals wideout Ja’Marr Chase for the AP Offensive Rookie of the Year.
But things went downhill in short order for Jones and the Patriots.
Over his final two seasons in New England, Jones went 8-17 over 25 games — throwing 24 touchdowns, 23 interceptions and posting a passer rating of 81.5. When he was benched for good after Week 12 of the 2023 campaign, the writing was on the wall that Jones’ time in New England was over.
So what led to Jones’ downfall after three seasons with the Patriots?
A lack of execution
Make no mistake, Jones’ departure from New England was a systemic failure on multiple fronts by a Patriots coaching staff and organization that squandered a chance to elevate a promising young quarterback.
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But Jones’ lackluster returns can’t all but be chalked up to the lack of talent around him — or Bill Belichick’s head-scratching personnel decisions on the offensive side of the ball.
Jones was never projected as a potential top-five QB in the NFL ranks — capable of taking over games thanks to a howitzer of an arm. But in the right system, Jones could thrive as an accurate pocket passer who can execute off of short throws and RPO plays when given time and space to operate.
His football IQ, accuracy, and decision-making were viewed as strengths. But by the end of his tenure in New England, Jones had strayed far away from those hallmarks.
The 2023 Patriots were hampered by several flaws on their roster en route to an ugly 4-13 record. But Jones’ propensity for committing turnovers at critical junctures of games cost New England a few more wins last year — headlined by a red-zone pick against the Colts in Germany in November.
Jones was let down by several critical decision-makers around him in New England. But the onus still falls on the QB to execute out on the gridiron. When the Patriots finally decided to bench Jones for good in November, few were surprised by the outcome.
A brutal coaching reshuffle
Jones thrived in his rookie season under offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels. New England was put in a tough spot in 2022 after McDaniels left Foxborough to take over as head coach of the Raiders — taking several coaches and staffers with him.
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It was far from an enviable position for Jones and Belichick to be in when it came to a sudden turnover at such a critical spot on an NFL coaching staff.
But rather than search for another proven OC, Belichick decided to install longtime defensive coach Matt Patricia as the team’s de-facto play-caller and offensive-line coach. Joe Judge — who primarily worked with special teams during his first stint in Foxborough — also took over as an offensive assistant and quarterbacks coach.
The results were ugly, with Jones and the Patriots regressing en route to an 8-9 record in 2022.
Not only were Patricia and Judge far from the ideal choices to oversee Jones’ development, but Belichick and the Patriots also tried to significantly augment their entire offensive scheme into more of a West Coast-style offense.
Such an ambitious undertaking failed to get off the ground.
“A lot of guys would ask, ‘Well, what’s going to happen if (the defense) does this?’ And you would see they hadn’t really accounted for that yet,” a Patriots source told Andrew Callahan of the Boston Herald last January. “And they’d say, ‘We’ll get to that when we get to that.’ That type of attitude got us in trouble.”
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In total, Jones was handed three different offensive coordinators during his three seasons in New England. And even though Bill O’Brien brought far more experience as the team’s OC in 2023, the damage had already been done to Jones.
A porous offensive line
Some of Mac Jones’ propensity for “seeing ghosts” while reading defenses and hurrying into ill-advised throws in 2023 might have been a direct result of a season’s worth of getting buried into the turf due to some woeful pass protection.
During Jones’ rookie season, the Patriots had a solid five-man unit up front in Isaiah Wynn, Ted Karras, David Andrews, Shaq Mason, and Trent Brown. That offseason, New England let Karras walk in free agency, traded Mason for a fifth-round pick and moved Wynn over to right tackle in an ill-advised lineup switch.
Belichick’s efforts to remedy those miscues last offseason made a weak spot on New England’s depth chart even worse.
Rather than target proven commodities on the O-line through the draft or free agency like Mike McGlinchey, New England chose to sign bargain-bin free agents like Riley Reiff and Calvin Anderson.
Things got so bad for the Patriots that the team had to trade for two tackles in Vederian Lowe and Tyrone Wheatley Jr. at the end of the 2023 preseason. Both did little to stem the tide in a season where opposing pass rushers feasted against Jones.
As noted by MassLive’s Mark Daniels, Jones was sacked 28 times, or on 5.1% of his dropbacks during his rookie year. In 2022, the Patriots allowed 41 sacks — with that number swelling to 48 sacks in 2023, the most allowed by the team since the 2008 season.
A dearth of offensive weapons
Jones may not have fit the profile of an elite passer. But Belichick and the Patriots also did little to surround him with the necessary talent to elevate his game and help New England consistently move the chains.
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Last offseason, New England chose to not re-sign Jones’ top receiving target in Jakobi Meyers — signing JuJu Smith-Schuster to a similar contract instead.
Meyers, whose route-running and playmaking out of the slot routinely bailed out Jones during his first two seasons, reeled in 71 catches for 807 yards and eight touchdowns in 2023 with the Raiders.
Smith-Schuster closed out his first season in New England with 29 catches for 260 yards and one touchdown, with New England ranking last in generating 20-plus yard pass plays (37) in 2023, according to Evan Lazar of Patriots.com.
The Patriots also used their first three picks in the 2023 NFL Draft on defensive players, even with the obvious need for an injection of playmaking talent on the offensive side of the ball.
Even though New England’s first-round pick last spring in Christian Gonzalez is looking like a home-run selection, the Patriots could have scooped up a young pass-catcher like Rashee Rice (79 catches, 938 yards, 7 touchdowns with Chiefs) or Tank Dell (47 catches, 709 yards, 7 touchdowns with Texans) in the second round.
Targeting a wideout before the sixth round in the 2023 NFL Draft could have given Jones more to work with, while the decision to not sign veteran receiver DeAndre Hopkins last summer (75 catches, 1,057 yards, seven touchdowns with Tennessee) also looks rough after New England averaged just 13.9 points per game in 2023.
Jones left plenty to be desired with his play over the last two seasons. But the supporting cast around Jones didn’t exactly give him plenty of options — especially when he only had limited time to drop back when facing pressure.
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And be it Kayshon Boutte not keeping his feet in bounds during New England’s season-opening game against the Eagles, DeVante Parker not hauling in a deep ball against the Raiders (and taking little accountability for it) in Week 6 or Smith-Schuster letting a pass bounce off his hands en route to a game-ending pick against the Commanders in Week 9, the Patriots woeful receiving corps did little to help Jones out in 2023.
A “toxic” environment
Given New England’s extended stretch of questionable personnel moves both with the Patriots’ roster and coaching staff, it should come as little surprise that Jones was frustrated throughout most of his final two seasons in New England.
But the young QB did himself few favors during the 2022 season with several on-field outbursts directed at his teammates and coaching staff.
“I’m tired of that, honestly. I’m tired of it,” former Patriots DT Vince Wilfork said of Jones’s outbursts in December 2022. “You’re the leader of this team. You’re a quarterback. So you can’t be frustrated every single week, every single play. I don’t care if you’re getting the play called in late or whatever it may be. At the end of the day, you have to show some poise because you do operate the ship. You’re the head of the ship when you’re out there.
“Control what you can control,” Wilfork added. “That’s all you can do. But I’m tired of seeing him throwing a fit.”
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By the time the Patriots opted to bench Jones for the remainder of the 2023 season, it became evident that a fresh start was needed for all parties.
“He was well-liked early on, but, over time, lost support in the building,” Sports Illustrated’s Albert Breer wrote last month of Jones. “And the quarterback room he was in the last two years got toxic, to the point where Bailey Zappe, as a rookie, sometimes watched tape in the receiver room.”
Landing in Bill Belichick’s doghouse
Even though the Patriots gave Jones another shot during the 2023 season, the relationship between the QB and Belichick might have already been broken beyond repair.
Amid the struggles during the 2022 season under Patricia and Judge, Jones reportedly began calling around outside of the Patriots’ organization for help — drawing the ire of Belichick, as expected.
“He was telling people he wasn’t happy,” former NFL quarterback and current football analyst Chris Simms on Pro Football Talk Live in January 2023. “He was calling people about, ‘Hey, can you help us with ideas and do stuff like that? … From my understanding, Belichick found out all these things. He found out that Mac was talking to people, and all this, and there was some back-channel conversations going on behind Belichick’s back. And I think that’s where it did get personal.”
Some of that consternation felt by Belichick toward Jones reportedly started when the QB “showed resistance” to New England’s offensive changes under Patricia and Judge, per MassLive’s Mark Daniels.
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By Week 12 of the 2023 campaign, Belichick reportedly “stopped speaking” to Jones, with Zappe earning the final six starts of the season.
It was an unsustainable partnership between Jones and Belichick — both of whom no longer call Foxborough home after last year’s disastrous results.
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