The Michael McCorkle "Mac" Jones Thread

SMU_Sox

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I honestly thought this was one of his better games. He made good decisions. He took a bad sack or two but it’s hard to know how many of those were on him.
 

johnmd20

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I honestly thought this was one of his better games. He made good decisions. He took a bad sack or two but it’s hard to know how many of those were on him.
My god.

'one of his better games'

If "good decisions" means he let the defense and special teams do everything by going three and out and punting, then yes, I guess.
 

Bowser

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I honestly thought this was one of his better games. He made good decisions. He took a bad sack or two but it’s hard to know how many of those were on him.
I agree, but did he make a single play one would need to be at least an average NFL QB to make?

Baby steps, I guess.
 

StupendousMan

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On at least two occasions, Jones called an audible, into a play which failed miserably. Is there any way to find out just how many times during the game he changed the play, and what the outcome of those plays was?
 

Time to Mo Vaughn

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I honestly thought this was one of his better games. He made good decisions. He took a bad sack or two but it’s hard to know how many of those were on him.
You're probably right.

The fact that this was one of his better games though it's pretty good proof he's not capable of NFL quarterbacking.
 

JokersWildJIMED

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I honestly thought this was one of his better games. He made good decisions. He took a bad sack or two but it’s hard to know how many of those were on him.
I agree that this may be the consensus by talking heads, but good god, the offense scored 3 points! He took 6 sacks and made multiple bad decisions that killed drives. Despite compiling yards and completing a high percentage of passes, he was ineffective.
 

SMU_Sox

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23/27 for 246 yards. Under duress a lot. No bad decisions. No near picks. Made some nice throws.
 

Euclis20

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My god.

'one of his better games'

If "good decisions" means he let the defense and special teams do everything by going three and out and punting, then yes, I guess.
This.

The blame for all of the negative plays can be divvied up somehow amongst Mac, the line and the coaching staff, but other than not turning the ball over, I can't point to a single really good thing Mac did today. It seems almost impossible to finish only one drive in the red zone when the QB is 23-27 for 246 yards and you rush for 99 (with no turnovers), but here we are. Taking a sack on 1st or 2nd down, followed by gaining 10 yards on 3rd and 20 is just about the definition of empty calorie passing stats.
 

Smiling Joe Hesketh

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There’s no way this was a good game from Mac. He still has zero ability to read the field quickly. If everything is perfect he’s ok, but nothing is perfect in the NFL and he can’t run through his professions quickly enough.
 

SMU_Sox

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it’s because when they got past the 50 the OL fucked the dog on 2 drives. They couldn’t run block for shit today and their pass protection was a joke. What a weird day to shit on Mac.
 

SMU_Sox

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Most of his sacks, so 4/6 were on him? Let’s see the replay because I think that’s way off.
 

Van Everyman

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I honestly thought this was one of his better games. He made good decisions. He took a bad sack or two but it’s hard to know how many of those were on him.
He’s also cleaned up his mistakes from earlier in the season. I know no one wants to hear this and expects POINTZ but he’s gone from making multiple mistakes trying to go deep or do too much every game from before the injury to being maybe a little overly cautious now – which looks worse when the OL isn’t holding up bc the chunk plays he was getting earlier in the season aren’t there. And with all due respect to @Smiling Joe Hesketh, he had several nice passes where he went through his progression today and ended on third or fourth option. They also designed some nice bootlegs and play action calls which they hadn’t done as much of earlier in the season.

What I’d like to see in the games going forward is Mac pushing the ball downfield a bit more.

One thing they looked like a new wrinkle today was all the TEs in the backfield with the RB. They seemed to do well on one drive with that and then got away from it when they got further downfield.
 

E5 Yaz

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I honestly thought this was one of his better games. He made good decisions. He took a bad sack or two but it’s hard to know how many of those were on him.
Send in the hounds
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Don't bother ... they're here
 

FL4WL3SS

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He’s also cleaned up his mistakes from earlier in the season. I know no one wants to hear this and expects POINTZ but he’s gone from making multiple mistakes trying to go deep or do too much every game from before the injury to being maybe a little overly cautious now – which looks worse when the OL isn’t holding up bc the chunk plays he was getting earlier in the season aren’t there. And with all due respect to @Smiling Joe Hesketh, he had several nice passes where he went through his progression today and ended on third or fourth option. They also designed some nice bootlegs and play action calls which they hadn’t done as much of earlier in the season.

What I’d like to see in the games going forward is Mac pushing the ball downfield a bit more.

One thing they looked like a new wrinkle today was all the TEs in the backfield with the RB. They seemed to do well on one drive with that and then got away from it when they got further downfield.
He didn't have time to go deep today, so how do we know he cleaned up his mistakes. Anything over a three step drop was a sack.

It's crazy to point to this game and say anything definitely about Mac. It was the same old story. Offense fails to put up points, Mac makes the easy plays and does just enough for folks to be able to defend him. Rinse and repeat.
 

Hendu for Kutch

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He needs to learn to throw the ball away when nothing's there. Taking 6 sacks (most after several seconds) without any throwaways is pretty terrible. It seems like he tries to sneak out of it to buy time instead, but he's not that type of QB.

They moved the ball fairly well, but those sacks just killed drives.
 

Eddie Jurak

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I honestly thought this was one of his better games. He made good decisions. He took a bad sack or two but it’s hard to know how many of those were on him.
23/27 for 246 yards. Under duress a lot. No bad decisions. No near picks. Made some nice throws.
I'm with you, I think he was OK today. No chukcing the ball up for grabs. Poor line play.
 

JokersWildJIMED

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Most of his sacks, so 4/6 were on him? Let’s see the replay because I think that’s way off.
Probably not, but effective NFL QBs simply don’t score 3 points and take 6 sacks a game. Period. Pocket awareness, throw the ball away, etc. The same arguments are made for similar terrible quarterbacks all the time. It doesn’t matter how many yards you are completing if you are consistently making bad decisions (bad audibles, not throwing the ball away, not coming off initial reads, poor pocket movement/ awareness, etc.) deep in opponent’s territory.

Only in New England can a 3 point 6 sack be seen as improvement, but with Mac any no turnover game is progress.
 

DeJesus Built My Hotrod

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Let's save some pixels and Nip's server. If you were uncertain on Mac coming into this game, you are uncertain on Mac after this game.

If you are one of the half-dozen or so folks in this thread who feel like we are irrationally putting any hope that Jones can be anything other than a holder of clip-boards and you need to keep selling that here, nothing has changed. He is still not the guy.

I mean we can all post the same posts over and over again but BB/Patricia/Judge are too busy cooking up baby offenses to read this thread and Mac would have to close the browser three seconds into reading so...

Nothing has changed.
 

johnmd20

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Let's save some pixels and Nip's server. If you were uncertain on Mac coming into this game, you are uncertain on Mac after this game.

If you are one of the half-dozen or so folks in this thread who feel like we are irrationally putting any hope that Jones can be anything other than a holder of clip-boards and you need to keep selling that here, nothing has changed. He is still not the guy.

I mean we can all post the same posts over and over again but BB/Patricia/Judge are too busy cooking up baby offenses to read this thread and Mac would have to close the browser three seconds into reading so...

Nothing has changed.
Why do you get to decide the conversation is over and decided?
 

Jungleland

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I don't think I'd go as far as to say Mac was good today, but it was the closest we've seen to him taking a step in the right direction since before the injury. He stepped up in the pocket, he took care of the ball, he made a couple decent throws. If it sounds like damning with faint praise, that's because in a sense it is, but a building block is a building block. If I had to say today whether he's the guy or not, I'd obviously choose no, but there's over a third of a season left. Might as well watch what happens and try to be objective, and imo objectively speaking he played better today than 3 points would imply.
 

8slim

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I find it really difficult to asses Mac’s play when the OL was so awful, and Patricia did him no favors. 3 points means he wasn’t good. But I can’t quite figure out how much of the bad was him, and how much was a myriad of other factors.
 

SMU_Sox

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Send in the hounds
There ought to be hounds
Don't bother ... they're here
Yeah and for the record I’m not sold on Mac. You look at the last 3 games and the pass pro and run blocking and penalties and play calling and and and I’m not sure you can really get much out of it other than Mac actually looked decent today given his shit sandwich everywhere else.
The OL is their biggest issue right now, then Patricia stuff like scheme/game-plan/play-calling. Mac is probably 3rd. Again not sold on him. Never have been sold on him. Just today thought he played decently. And you can’t extrapolate from today. One it’s really short-sighted to extrapolate on one game anyway and make any sweeping conclusions and two when you have this kind of OL performance (two starters went down and injured guys played) and still have issues with the offensive coaching staff why would you want to anyway?
@DeJesus Built My Hotrod - exactly.

I will tell you what. I’ll charity bet on a couple things. 1) $25 to whatever LGBTQ charity SJH picks if Mac was partially responsible for 4 of his sacks and 2) $50 to whatever LGBTQ charity I choose if Mac doesn’t get a higher PFF game grade on this than his season average (and $25 if it isn’t a 70 or better). Obviously the nature of the charities is due to the tragedy this weekend. Let’s make it interesting.


Probably not, but effective NFL QBs simply don’t score 3 points and take 6 sacks a game. Period. Pocket awareness, throw the ball away, etc. The same arguments are made for similar terrible quarterbacks all the time. It doesn’t matter how many yards you are completing if you are consistently making bad decisions (bad audibles, not throwing the ball away, not coming off initial reads, poor pocket movement/ awareness, etc.) deep in opponent’s territory.

Only in New England can a 3 point 6 sack be seen as improvement, but with Mac any no turnover game is progress.
They usually don’t! And maybe Mac isn’t that guy. Cajuste, Ferentz, Wynn/Hurt-Brown, and rookie Strange who is regressing played like shit in pass pro. This is a dog shit line and has been the last 3 games.
 

Justthetippett

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He needs to learn to throw the ball away when nothing's there. Taking 6 sacks (most after several seconds) without any throwaways is pretty terrible. It seems like he tries to sneak out of it to buy time instead, but he's not that type of QB.

They moved the ball fairly well, but those sacks just killed drives.
It’s also where the sacks/bad plays occurred; often either in the scoring area or the plus side of the field. He seems to lack some awareness in those moments. His line sucked today (on run blocking as well) but again they probably looked worse because in some of the deep sets Mac was a beat slow to move up or around in the pocket.
 

FL4WL3SS

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I find it really difficult to asses Mac’s play when the OL was so awful, and Patricia did him no favors. 3 points means he wasn’t good. But I can’t quite figure out how much of the bad was him, and how much was a myriad of other factors.
Pretty consistently the story yeah? Week after week.

I'm left wondering why they didn't utilize Jakobi and Henry more on quick, over the middle stuff.
 

Cellar-Door

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I mean, I thought he was pretty bad, I also thought it was one of his better games this year, because he's been really bad all year.
This was a backup QB gameplan and he played like a fairly competent backup QB. Do I think he did anything special... nope. But he didn't totally fuck anything up either which is honestly a step in the right direction. Overall I came out thinking he played like a guy who you play when you don't have an NFL starting caliber QB and just want to hope the other team can't score enough.
 

8slim

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Pretty consistently the story yeah? Week after week.

I'm left wondering why they didn't utilize Jakobi and Henry more on quick, over the middle stuff.
Yeah, but that’s because the OL stinks and Patricia is proving to not be a good OC (to me, anyway).

Very few QBs can overcome the kind of garbage OL the Pats have. And Patricia has no feel for the game. There was a stretch where he called Stevenson’s number four straight times. Surprise, he got stuffed the last 2.
 

joe dokes

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He can't just "throw it away" when he's inside the tackles, like he was several times. Doesn't he have to at least chuck it in the area of an eligible receiver?
 

Cellar-Door

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He can't just "throw it away" when he's inside the tackles, like he was several times. Doesn't he have to at least chick it in the area of an eligible receiver?
yes. I will say on the one people were most upset on he definitely could have just dumped it at the RB's feet, not sure about some of the others.
 

SMU_Sox

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Yeah, but that’s because the OL stinks and Patricia is proving to not be a good OC (to me, anyway).

Very few QBs can overcome the kind of garbage OL the Pats have. And Patricia has no feel for the game. There was a stretch where he called Stevenson’s number four straight times. Surprise, he got stuffed the last 2.
They have been slicing through us all day so let’s call a stretch outside play on 4th and 3. Surely this time they won’t penetrate…
 

NickEsasky

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Why do you get to decide the conversation is over and decided?
It’s kind of his schtick. That said, the larger point remains: We don’t know much more than we did prior to the game on Mac. His Tackles are turnstiles, but he also does not step up in the pocket to extend anything. So in a game where one big mistake could have cost them, credit to Mac for not making one.
 

Shelterdog

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Probably not, but effective NFL QBs simply don’t score 3 points and take 6 sacks a game. Period. Pocket awareness, throw the ball away, etc. The same arguments are made for similar terrible quarterbacks all the time. It doesn’t matter how many yards you are completing if you are consistently making bad decisions (bad audibles, not throwing the ball away, not coming off initial reads, poor pocket movement/ awareness, etc.) deep in opponent’s territory.

Only in New England can a 3 point 6 sack be seen as improvement, but with Mac any no turnover game is progress.
But good quarterbacks do have terrible games sometimes especially when their lines play like crap against good defenses. Now whether he’s consisntly making bad decisions that’s a different question. I frankly don’t think he was but opinions vary
 

Cellar-Door

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Yeah, but that’s because the OL stinks and Patricia is proving to not be a good OC (to me, anyway).

Very few QBs can overcome the kind of garbage OL the Pats have. And Patricia has no feel for the game. There was a stretch where he called Stevenson’s number four straight times. Surprise, he got stuffed the last 2.
THis is over the top. Patricia is no genius, and the line is hurt. However... Patricia did okay with Bailey Zappe, and the line was the same for that as many of Mac's failures.

Today the line was quite bad, Mac did nothing to help but didn't hurt, so not one of his worse performances.

I will say in a slight defense of Patricia... what do you call when your line is hurt/bad and you can't trust your QB to make the right read? He dialed up a lot of effective screens and runs considering the defense had zero fear of Mac throwing downfield.
 

JokersWildJIMED

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One play where Mac looked like the QB from last year??? …the 3rd down pass to Bourne deep in Jets territory (questionable spot) in the first q. Nice pocket movement and tight throw.

One thing that seems to happen is that he does seem to lose some confidence after a bad sack and that sets him back for a time, and that (obviously) needs to change.
 

8slim

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THis is over the top. Patricia is no genius, and the line is hurt. However... Patricia did okay with Bailey Zappe, and the line was the same for that as many of Mac's failures.

Today the line was quite bad, Mac did nothing to help but didn't hurt, so not one of his worse performances.

I will say in a slight defense of Patricia... what do you call when your line is hurt/bad and you can't trust your QB to make the right read? He dialed up a lot of effective screens and runs considering the defense had zero fear of Mac throwing downfield.
I cant reconcile Mac being “terrible” with Patricia being OK. Mac completed most of the pass calls that Patricia called. He did call a few good screens, and then we didn’t go back to them. The whole O was disjointed and it seemed like Patricia forgot the OL stunk as the game went along.
 

JOBU

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There’s no way this was a good game from Mac. He still has zero ability to read the field quickly. If everything is perfect he’s ok, but nothing is perfect in the NFL and he can’t run through his professions quickly enough.
It’s almost like you could say he’s the Nick Folk of QB’s.
 

Arroyoyo

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Which (available or possibly available) offensive coordinator would SOSH like to see work with Mac in 2023?
 

Al Zarilla

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Probably not, but effective NFL QBs simply don’t score 3 points and take 6 sacks a game. Period. Pocket awareness, throw the ball away, etc. The same arguments are made for similar terrible quarterbacks all the time. It doesn’t matter how many yards you are completing if you are consistently making bad decisions (bad audibles, not throwing the ball away, not coming off initial reads, poor pocket movement/ awareness, etc.) deep in opponent’s territory.

Only in New England can a 3 point 6 sack be seen as improvement, but with Mac any no turnover game is progress.
Only in New England? Boston/New England sports fans can be as critical as it gets.
 

Devizier

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I am pretty unmoved from my position that the guy is an average/mediocre quarterback who lacks the ability to elevate his coaching/teammates. Relatively speaking that might count as a draft success but there’s a reason why bad teams spend pick after pick on quarterbacks.
 

DeJesus Built My Hotrod

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Why do you get to decide the conversation is over and decided?
Where in my post did I decide the conversation is over? We literally have the same posters posting the same things over and over in this thread. It won't change what the Patriots coaching staff is going to do. I was simply seeing if we can redirect the conversation. Barring injury, we are likley stuck with Mac Jones as the QB of the Patriots for the rest of the season. And he may not be the guy longterm.

I will ask this question though - if the Patriots make the playoffs and win a game or two, even with Jones putting up numbers like this, does that change anyone's opinion?
It might for me depending on how it plays out. I don't need great QB aesthetics if I get wins but I suspect there are others who would be unhappy with another Superbowl championship if its off the back of Jones terrible YPA etc etc.
 

johnmd20

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Where in my post did I decide the conversation is over? We literally have the same poster posting the same things over and over in this thread. It won't change what the Patriots coaching staff is going to do. I was simply seeing if we can redirect the conversation. Barring injury, we are likley stuck with Mac Jones as the QB of the Patriots for the rest of the season. And he may not be the guy longterm.

I will ask this question though - if the Patriots make the playoffs and win a game or two, even with Jones putting up numbers like this, does that change anyone's opinion?
It might for me depending on how it plays out. I don't need great QB aesthetics if I get wins but I suspect there are others who would be unhappy with another Superbowl championship if its off the back of Jones terrible YPA etc etc.
This is the Mac Jones thread.

Redirect it where, to Nick Folk?