The Michael McCorkle "Mac" Jones Thread

[Smiling Joe Hesketh]

I honestly think that's FAR too simple an explanation for Purdy or Mac; I think it's incredibly more likely that Purdy simply continued to develop as a QB and Mac did not. I don't think that stretches the imagination at all. Mac peaked in his first year and the league has found him out and he cannot process the game quickly enough to adjust, that's a tale as old as time and countless other QBs have had that happen to them no matter their organization or coaching.

Anything can be made to look inevitable with hindsight.

 

[FL4WL3SS]

I honestly think that's FAR too simple an explanation for Purdy or Mac; I think it's incredibly more likely that Purdy simply continued to develop as a QB and Mac did not. I don't think that stretches the imagination at all. Mac peaked in his first year and the league has found him out and he cannot process the game quickly enough to adjust, that's a tale as old as time and countless other QBs have had that happen to them no matter their organization or coaching.

I've been beating this drum since early last year, it was very evident towards the end of 2021 that the league caught up with him and he has not been able to recover.

 

[Deathofthebambino]

I honestly think that's FAR too simple an explanation for Purdy or Mac; I think it's incredibly more likely that Purdy simply continued to develop as a QB and Mac did not. I don't think that stretches the imagination at all. Mac peaked in his first year and the league has found him out and he cannot process the game quickly enough to adjust, that's a tale as old as time and countless other QBs have had that happen to them no matter their organization or coaching.

I guess that's what I'm asking.

Does that development happen in a vaccuum? Did Brock Purdy just go home in the offseason and work on Rubik's Cubes to develop more brain material? I think "he continued to develop" is about as simple an explanation as could be made.

Whereas Mac peaking in his first year and "the league found him out" may be the 2nd most simple explanation when talking about quarterbacks.

You don't think guys like Kyle Shanahan and Josh McDaniels have anything to do with the success of the quarterbacks they coach?

 

[Smiling Joe Hesketh]

I guess that's what I'm asking.

Does that development happen in a vaccuum? Did Brock Purdy just go home in the offseason and work on Rubik's Cubes to develop more brain material? I think "he continued to develop" is about as simply an explanation as could be made.

Whereas Mac peaking in his first year and "the league found him out" may be the 2nd most simple explanation when talking about quarterbacks.

You don't think guys like Kyle Shanahan and Josh McDaniels have anything to do with the success of the quarterbacks they coach?

Of course they do, but at the end of the day the player grows according to his own capabilities and talents. How does a player fight through adversity? How quickly can he go through his reads while maintaining his mechanics and pocket feel? You can tell a player a thousand times what the right thing to do it, but the player has to be able to do it.

Everyone said that Brian Hoyer was incredibly smart and like an extra coach in the locker room, but on the field he played like an idiot and was too slow to keep up with the game in front of him.

Mac is too slow. You watch him and he's either too slow to deliver the ball or in such a panic he's rushing everything and getting terrible with his footwork because he's unable to process the game at a reasonable pace. His utter lack of arm strength doesn't help him, but Pennington post-injury also couldn't throw hard and he was pretty damn good.

 

[jezza1918]

I honestly think that's FAR too simple an explanation for Purdy or Mac; I think it's incredibly more likely that Purdy simply continued to develop as a QB and Mac did not. I don't think that stretches the imagination at all. Mac peaked in his first year and the league has found him out and he cannot process the game quickly enough to adjust, that's a tale as old as time and countless other QBs have had that happen to them no matter their organization or coaching.

Anything can be made to look inevitable with hindsight.

In a weird way I completely agree...I think I just ascribe more of Brock's development or Mac's lack thereof to coaching than you do.

 

[SMU_Sox]

Mac coming out played too quickly. Now he is so focused on the rush he is not reading the field. It reminds me of an study recently that looked at QB success in the first round and how teams with a winning record or who made the playoffs the year prior had a 50 to 66% success rate with QBs and teams that didn’t were around 25%. Landing spot matters. You develop a QB with consistency, good coaching, good scheme, and a good supporting cast. Tell me which of these Mac has had?

 

[Smiling Joe Hesketh]

In a weird way I completely agree...I think I just ascribe more of Brock's development or Mac's lack thereof to coaching than you do.

First it was lack of weapons, now it's coaching, first it was Patricia, now it's BoB....maybe Mac just sucks. Occam's Razor and all that.

 

[Smiling Joe Hesketh]

Mac coming out played too quickly. Now he is so focused on the rush he is not reading the field. It reminds me of an study recently that looked at QB success in the first round and how teams with a winning record or who made the playoffs the year prior had a 50 to 66% success rate with QBs and teams that didn’t were around 25%. Landing spot matters. You develop a QB with consistency, good coaching, good scheme, and a good supporting cast. Tell me which of these Mac has had?

Mac got to the playoffs his first year in the league, and given how much he's stunk since then, maybe we're not giving his coaching staff enough credit.

All these excuses coming out for Mac's performance. To me, the biggest reason for his performance is that he simply can't play. He got found out. The league adjusted and he could not respond. He's the Wily Mo Pena of the NFL.

 

[rodderick]

Mac coming out played too quickly. Now he is so focused on the rush he is not reading the field. It reminds me of an study recently that looked at QB success in the first round and how teams with a winning record or who made the playoffs the year prior had a 50 to 66% success rate with QBs and teams that didn’t were around 25%. Landing spot matters. You develop a QB with consistency, good coaching, good scheme, and a good supporting cast. Tell me which of these Mac has had?

The thing that bugs me is that it's not like they expected something out of Mac when they drafted him and they didn't get it. They knew he was a physically limited guy that would need an infrastructure around him in order to succeed. They weren't bamboozled. Now, I do think he's never been as good mentally and in terms of processing in the NFL as what was sold by some pre draft evaluators, but it's not like he's bad at it either. You had a point guard type QB making no money and you chose to surround him with nothing and then gave him Matt Patricia. I've been one of the most critical posters of Mac in this board but even I'll agree he was set up to fail. Now, in 2021? He had a situation around him that was vastly better than most first round QBs get in terms of coaching, OL, defensive support... but everything after that was an abject disaster.

 

[SMU_Sox]

He got found out? As in if you pressure him half the time he crumbles? If he has no one to throw to on the outside who can win you can beat him?

 

[Smiling Joe Hesketh]

BoB just said Cunningham has mostly been playing receiver on the practice squad, so we can probably cross his name off the list as possible QB candidates going forward.

 

[BigSoxFan]

I’d like to know why we’re constantly seeing him throw off his back foot even when he has time to throw. His brain has been so noodled that he’s seemingly lost all muscle memory.

 

[Smiling Joe Hesketh]

He got found out? As in if you pressure him half the time he crumbles? If he has no one to throw to on the outside who can win you can beat him?

He's had guys open this year and cannot get the ball to them. His mechanics are a disaster, and he seemingly cannot read both the rush and the field simultaneously.

 

[SMU_Sox]

Mac got to the playoffs that year largely in part from an easy schedule, a good defense, a top 3 OL, and JMD. Since then he has had a bad OL and no consistent coaching and his receivers have gone from bad to worse. He doesn’t even have Meyers anymore who at least could win on fades.

 

[Smiling Joe Hesketh]

I’d like to know why we’re constantly seeing him throw off his back foot even when he has time to throw. His brain has been so noodled that he’s seemingly lost all muscle memory.

Very much this. Even when there hasn't been pressure he's not stepping into throws. He may very well be Darnold-ed at this point. And it's likely time to move on from him ASAP if that's the case.

 

[SMU_Sox]

He's had guys open this year and cannot get the ball to them. His mechanics are a disaster, and he seemingly cannot read both the rush and the field simultaneously.

For sure. Mac has not played well the last 2.5 games. It’s also true that the team is terrible around him. I am all in favor of moving on from him but saying he is WMP and he was found out is wrong. It wasn’t just Mac. It’s their entire offense man.

 

[Smiling Joe Hesketh]

Mac got to the playoffs that year largely in part from an easy schedule, a good defense, a top 3 OL, and JMD. Since then he has had a bad OL and no consistent coaching and his receivers have gone from bad to worse. He doesn’t even have Meyers anymore who at least could win on fades.

I am in disagreement here as I believe Mac is making the receivers look worse than they really are.

But it doesn't really matter, does it. The team is terrible. Mac is terrible. It's best to find someone else whose football brain isn't broken and start over.

 

[rodderick]

I’d like to know why we’re constantly seeing him throw off his back foot even when he has time to throw. His brain has been so noodled that he’s seemingly lost all muscle memory.

He did that at Alabama way more often than you'd expect with a guy that had a pocket 5 acres wide in most snaps. Just a bad habit that got worse with pressure. The footwork was always kinda suspect, I recall that being one of the main reasons JT O'Sullivan didn't love him coming out, for instance. He never really threw consistently from a solid base.

 

[Smiling Joe Hesketh]

For sure. Mac has not played well the last 2.5 games. It’s also true that the team is terrible around him. I am all in favor of moving on from him but saying he is WMP and he was found out is wrong. It wasn’t just Mac. It’s their entire offense man.

I respect your opinion but I do not agree. Yes the offense as a whole needs to be better in every way, but the QB is the linchpin and he is playing at a sub-professional level. His decision-making has crashed and burned. A guy like Minshew or even Dalton on this team would be exponentially better even if everything else was the same. And Minshew and Dalton are "meh."

 

[SMU_Sox]

Put it this way. The league found out the Patriots couldn’t beat man coverage with their shit receivers since like 2019. Since then they have been playing man, funneling coverages to the outside, playing their safeties at shallow depth, and the Pats can’t win deep or on the outside. It’s not rocket surgery.

 

[Cellar-Door]

Mac has throughout his career struck me as a guy who never really adjusted to adversity. In college he spent 95% of his time sitting back behind a truly dominant line, surveying which of the wide open elite skill players he wanted to throw to. That was never going to happen in the NFL (though SF may be as close as it gets). The only time Mac has looked particularly good in the NFL was a stretch in his rookie year when the O-line was beasting, and they played a stretch of bad defenses mostly. He still had a lot of the same issues underlying though... back foot throws, struggles to drive the ball, late reads, missing open guys, not identifying pressure well.

Last year... lot of good reasons for him to struggle... poor playcaller, line declined (though overall it was more mediocre than terrible), and yes he doesn't have top skill players.
This year...line has been bad, skill players are mediocre.. you have a proven good playcaller though, one who consistently produced good offenses even with bad skill players and he's designing easy spots for Mac.

Now, I agree Mac probably develops better in a better situation, but.... it's not coaching that he never sets his feet. It's not coaching that he loses his reads the minute he thinks he might get hit. That's just something you can't fix with coaching, and you can't tell about a player until you see it. Some guys just don't keep all the things they know they should do when they get (or think they'll get) pressure, some guys do. If Mac was just getting hit a ton, but wasn't imploding, I'd think differently, but he just crumbles, and all his worst habits come to the front.

Yes, Mac is facing a lot of pressure, and yes he doesn't have world beaters at WR. BUT.... some of the pressure is because teams dare him to make the right reads and throws, and they don't think he will. We've seen plenty of Mac bailing from clean pockets due to imagined pressure, plenty of guys schemed open that Mac never even looks at, and plenty of teams saying "Mac Jones can't make that throw, bring an extra guy" or "Mac won't make that throw, safeties stay in the middle".

This is a bad situation for a QB.... it's a worse situation with a bad QB, and I feel like I've seen enough of Mac to say he's a bad QB. Sure drop him in SF on the best talent int he league and he'd put up some nice numbers, but I think it's more likely he's a limiting factor on an offense than a positive one.

 

[azsoxpatsfan]

Very much this. Even when there hasn't been pressure he's not stepping into throws. He may very well be Darnold-ed at this point. And it's likely time to move on from him ASAP if that's the case.

Yea I’m pretty certain he’s mentally broken. He had a better supporting cast in 2021, but he was also just a better player. He needs a fresh start somewhere else if he’s ever going to succeed. I really don’t think he’s actually a terrible quarterback, I think he’ll have a colt mccoy/case Keenum type of career

that said, we clearly don’t have better options right now, the team has tons of other problems as well, and I’m fine rolling with Mac the rest of the way because I think that gives us our best shot at a top pick

 

[SMU_Sox]

I respect your opinion but I do not agree. Yes the offense as a whole needs to be better in every way, but the QB is the linchpin and he is playing at a sub-professional level. His decision-making has crashed and burned. A guy like Minshew or even Dalton on this team would be exponentially better even if everything else was the same. And Minshew and Dalton are "meh."

I just take issue with “found out”. What did they find out about Mac that wasn’t true for the Pats since 2019?

 

[Smiling Joe Hesketh]

Put it this way. The league found out the Patriots couldn’t beat man coverage with their shit receivers since like 2019. Since then they have been playing man, funneling coverages to the outside, playing their safeties at shallow depth, and the Pats can’t win deep or on the outside. It’s not rocket surgery.

The film looks from this year have shown multiple opportunities to deliver the ball to open guys and Mac can't do it.

Again. All these reasons to blame everyone but Mac. I agree there are many other problems on the team, but IMO Mac is the biggest one.

 

[Smiling Joe Hesketh]

I just take issue with “found out”. What did they find out about Mac that wasn’t true for the Pats since 2019?

That once shit goes wrong for him he cannot rebound from it. The loss of all sense of footwork once he got pressured a bit is a prime example.

He is, as another pie-faced QB once uttered, "seeing ghosts."

 

[rodderick]

Put it this way. The league found out the Patriots couldn’t beat man coverage with their shit receivers since like 2019. Since then they have been playing man, funneling coverages to the outside, playing their safeties at shallow depth, and the Pats can’t win deep or on the outside. It’s not rocket surgery.

Yeah, that's it. 3rd down especially is cover 1 man city and now the opponent gets home with 4 to boot, lol. Lost their only consistent man beater in Meyers too.

 

[luckiestman]

You don't think guys like Kyle Shanahan and Josh McDaniels have anything to do with the success of the quarterbacks they coach?

I’m witnessing a different direction in NYC. I personally like my last OCs scheme better than what Hackett has shown me so far, however, Zach could not hit a guy in the flat last year. Now, Hackett and Rodgers working with the kid has him looking serviceable. I think most of it is mental. He could not take LaFleur’s coaching. The line is also a little better, this might be better coaching, idk. But it’s even things like post game interviews in losses and resilience. It might be too late for Zach in NYC. He needed this 3 years ago. So I think it’s all a partnership. Some will be awesome no matter what. Some will suck no matter what, but I think the middle has a lot of paths it could go down.

 

[jezza1918]

First it was lack of weapons, now it's coaching, first it was Patricia, now it's BoB....maybe Mac just sucks. Occam's Razor and all that.

I think all those things work together, including (if I had to guess) Mac for not doing the necessary work to reach his ceiling. Apples to potatoes really, but I think part of my perspective is shaped by coaching for ten years. I had quite a few players that regressed on the court over 4 years, and not one of them is solely to blame.
Mac sucks, and I said a page or two ago that I agree he is broken, I just dont think he is the only reason he sucks.

 

[Smiling Joe Hesketh]

I think all those things work together, including (if I had to guess) Mac for not doing the necessary work to reach his ceiling. Apples to potatoes really, but I think part of my perspective is shaped by coaching for ten years. I had quite a few players that regressed on the court over 4 years, and not one of them is solely to blame.
Mac sucks, and I said a page or two ago that I agree he is broken, I just dont think he is the only reason he sucks.

I don't either, there are many reasons he sucks. I am just emphasizing what the biggest reason it for that suckage IMO.

 

[luckiestman]

Mac got to the playoffs that year largely in part from an easy schedule, a good defense, a top 3 OL, and JMD. Since then he has had a bad OL and no consistent coaching and his receivers have gone from bad to worse. He doesn’t even have Meyers anymore who at least could win on fades.

Everyone wanted to compare him to Penny, maybe he is just an uglier Sanchez

 

[Smiling Joe Hesketh]

Everyone wanted to compare him to Penny, maybe he is just an uglier Sanchez

I think Mac's girlfriend is older than 17, though.

 

[luckiestman]

I think Mac's girlfriend is older than 17, though.

It’s only fair to average that out with Zach’s MILFs

 

[Smiling Joe Hesketh]

It’s only fair to average that out with Zach’s MILFs

If I ever get divorced Imma start wearing a Zach bandana.

 

[Deathofthebambino]

I’d like to know why we’re constantly seeing him throw off his back foot even when he has time to throw. His brain has been so noodled that he’s seemingly lost all muscle memory.

Because he's been broken.

When you've got two guys up the middle in your face on literally 40-50% of your dropbacks, within 1.5 seconds, you're going to start planning for a pass rush that may or may not come. He's seeing ghosts and rightfully so and giving up on reads quicker than he should, because he has no idea if in the next breath, he's about to take a blindside sack from some jag that beat Trent Brown like he wasn't there.

Let's watch the greatest to ever do it, when he was under pressure last year, and throwing off his back foot:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guSWhksXVbQ


That's the grim reality of what happens when you don't protect a quarterback and don't give them anyone to throw the ball to. They force things and make huge mistakes. Mac is broken, and it's too bad because we never got a chance to see if he could have built on that rookie season.

 

[Rico Guapo]

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxfKMWqaM7Q


The discussion around the 8:30 mark is eye opening (mac making mistakes in practice, defense tries to point it out to him, mac repeats same mistake in games).

 

[SMU_Sox]

The film looks from this year have shown multiple opportunities to deliver the ball to open guys and Mac can't do it.

Again. All these reasons to blame everyone but Mac. I agree there are many other problems on the team, but IMO Mac is the biggest one.

Mac right now is the biggest problem on the team but he wouldn't be if not for some truly horrible surroundings. OL btw is one of the the top 5 worst in the last 20 years or something in pass pro. I know I posted that or someone posted that recently. We're talking historically bad. Oh and your jump ball winner is like 1 for 9 in contested situations and no one else can beat press and win on the outside. You changed OC's 3 times in 3 years and the HC/GM shipped away the one consistent man beater, Meyers, and your skill positions guys are shit. Mac is a symptom of the cancer that is eating this team alive. He isn't very good but going forward you're going to have similar results with similar process. What do you expect? No one would be good in this situation but also many QBs would be a lot better. It's still a fucked situation and Mac is still an issue. If they fixed the line the offense could at least be passable. He was hitting open guys weeks 1-2.5 and seeing the field well.

His footwork was always an issue. It wouldn't matter as much if he trusted the pocket to step into. Shit he tried to do that on the pick-6 last week.

That once shit goes wrong for him he cannot rebound from it. The loss of all sense of footwork once he got pressured a bit is a prime example.

He is, as another pie-faced QB once uttered, "seeing ghosts."

Two things: Mac was seeing it well until the second half of the Jets game. He has had the worst pressure against him career wise in these last 3 weeks. Yes he needs to be better but he's also a pocket passer who needed good protection coming out. Right now he is so fucked in the head with pressure he can't see the field. That's partially on him but it is also why they might want to consider BB not handling the rebuild because he did everything you could do wrong about it.

Do you remember the "blueprint" for how to beat Brady and how we all mocked that because DUH of course if you pressure someone up the middle a lot they will crumble? Well it turns out if you pressure guys 40-50% of the time most of them break down. Mac could have turned out better, probably, but...


Look end of the day sure let's pass on Mac. I don't want to see another rookie put in this kind of situation. It's just not going to be productive. Bad process gets you bad results.

 

[SMU_Sox]

I do think he has lost support of his teammates. I don't blame them either. The offense has already turned on each other in the locker room.

 

[rodderick]

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxfKMWqaM7Q


The discussion around the 8:30 mark is eye opening (mac making mistakes in practice, defense tries to point it out to him, mac repeats same mistake in games).

The reaction from the offense after the pick six was so telling to me. Guys just looked exasperated. Henry had his hands up like "I was open man, what the fuck??". And the focus of pretty much every player on blaming turnovers for their struggles when, well, we know who's the guy turning the ball over. Not to Felger and Mazz this, but hey, it's the type of stuff that happens to shitty teams.

 

[EvilEmpire]

I guess that's what I'm asking.

Does that development happen in a vaccuum? Did Brock Purdy just go home in the offseason and work on Rubik's Cubes to develop more brain material? I think "he continued to develop" is about as simple an explanation as could be made.

Whereas Mac peaking in his first year and "the league found him out" may be the 2nd most simple explanation when talking about quarterbacks.

You don't think guys like Kyle Shanahan and Josh McDaniels have anything to do with the success of the quarterbacks they coach?

The step up in quality from college to NFL level QB coaching is pretty steep, and I think probably much more for Purdy than Mac.

Purdy going from Iowa St. to SF is a huge step up in quality of coaching. I think Purdy didn't reach much of his potential at Iowa St. and had a metric fuckton of room for growth in SF.

I think it was a much smaller jump in quality for Mac going from Saban at Alabama to NE. I think maybe Mac realized most of his potential under Saban and doesn't have as much room to grow.

I think early NFL development from college programs starts fast and then plateaus a bit and moves more slowly, like learning often does in other environments. Maybe even more so for QBs.

It is also possible that Purdy, like Brady, may actually have been an unrecognized football genius in the draft and SF lucked out. Trey Lance had access to the same coaching but SF moved on from him without really giving him that much of a shot, so obviously they saw something once Brock was in the building getting trained.

 

[Smiling Joe Hesketh]

I do think he has lost support of his teammates. I don't blame them either. The offense has already turned on each other in the locker room.

I alluded to this earlier in the thread but it's clear a lot of guys have checked out because they know Mac cannot lead them to points or wins.

I wonder if that's why we saw the Zappe bump show up at times last year. Yeah he stinks, and he was playing terrible defenses, but the team as a whole looked more confident with him out there. Of course this year Zappe hasn't done anything either...

 

[SMU_Sox]

Yeah, that's it. 3rd down especially is cover 1 man city and now the opponent gets home with 4 to boot, lol. Lost their only consistent man beater in Meyers too.

Blueprint! Dude they can’t even block simple twists and stunts. It’s pathetic. You can beat their OL with the most vanilla stuff! Tbh I would take college OLs over them this year and I don’t know if I ever thought that in my life.

 

[SMU_Sox]

I alluded to this earlier in the thread but it's clear a lot of guys have checked out because they know Mac cannot lead them to points or wins.

Yeah that’s on coaching too. I wouldn’t be surprised if BB has lost a bunch of the locker room but this time for realz. They are playing so soft right now on offense. Eventually the defense will check out too.


I’ll put a flag here though that if the OL starts getting healthy and protecting better the offense will go from one of the worst ever to just bad. What’s going to suck is if they go from like 1-7 or 2-6 and then end up getting 5-7 wins. Unlikely of course but wouldn’t surprise me at all.

 

[BusRaker]

Just because your O-Line sucks is no excuse to toss up ducks that lead to 10 point (or perhaps 7.1 point in the Pats case) swings in the game. What I always admired about smart QBs is their ability to throw the ball in the stands rather than Fitz-magic it to the other team. Go 12-30 with no picks rather than hand the other team double digit advantages. Reminds me of Tyrod Taylor who I respected, rather than the Fitzy and first two years of Josh Allen. Yeah TT got the shaft because his coach sucked but he made the right decisions.

 

[Jimbodandy]

The reaction from the offense after the pick six was so telling to me. Guys just looked exasperated. Henry had his hands up like "I was open man, what the fuck??". And the focus of pretty much every player on blaming turnovers for their struggles when, well, we know who's the guy turning the ball over. Not to Felger and Mazz this, but hey, it's the type of stuff that happens to shitty teams.

If this team justifiably moves on from Mac this offseason and brings in a medium QB or even a rookie stud and doesn't do anything about the OT situation, we'll be having these conversations again next year. To bring back RMPS, I've been listening to my Bruin fan friends complain about the goalie for most of my adult life. They swap goalies, and then it's the coach's fault. Then it's Krecji or Chara or Bourque getting long in the tooth, etc.

Minshew or Mayfield with 1.8 seconds is going to suck too. Look at last year's draft. Yeah, the OT crop was pretty bad, but does this team look like a team that didn't need an OT? Someone mentioned today (SJH) about how Stevenson looks injured and is averaging 2.8 after basically averaging 5 the last two years. Sure maybe he's injured, and maybe Zeke is cooked too, but also maybe the OL couldn't block for peak Emmitt Smith. This team's top three draftees were defensive, #4 was a backup center, and #5 was a kicker. No tackles. None.

 

[Bongorific]

Purdy reminds me very, very much of an early-career Tom Brady. His best attributes are his decision-making and incredible accuracy. It's eerie how alike he is to Brady circa-2003.

Mac, unfortunately, is none of those things. As things continue to unravel I can't help but wonder if BB got a good recommendation from his buddy Saban and figured he was all set at QB.

I’m not sure where they actually had Mac graded though. He dropped to them and would have been foolish not to draft him at their spot. Maybe it says something that they didn’t trade up and therefore preferred Mac to Fields, but there’s no way Bill was going to pay multiple firsts like SF to control the after Lawrence pick.

 

[lexrageorge]

I'm not sure why people are blaming coaching for Mac's current struggles.

I get that last season was a fiasco with Judge and Patricia. But Bill O'Brien is no Matt Patricia when it comes to coaching the offense. He was also OC for the Pats and worked closely with Josh McDaniels as an offensive assistant, and uses a lot of the same concepts. So, if anything, Mac is back in familiar territory, even if some of the terminology has evolved since BOB was in his first stint at New England.

And what I've seen is that O'Brien has dialed up plays that involve Mac getting the ball out quickly when under pressure, something that seemed to work at times against Philly and the Jets and even latter part of the Dolphins game. And not even Bill O'Brien can fix the fact that the OL is the worst unit in the league right now - with no pass protection and no running game whatsoever, coaching matters a lot less.

The OL, WR's, and Mac all deserve a large share of the blame here. Whether Mac is fixable either this season or in the future is unclear, but seems less likely by the week.

 

[RedOctober3829]

Mike Reiss was on with Zo and Bertrand on 98.5 this afternoon and actually suggested that they trade Mac Jones before the deadline if the team does not respond better to him. Zo and him were spitballing and suggested a Mac-for-Jimmy G trade.

 

[SMU_Sox]

Even if he is fixable he was still a 6.99-7.0 guy, or to me, a guy you might be able to win with but he is not a game-changer.

 

[lexrageorge]

I’m not sure where they actually had Mac graded though. He dropped to them and would have been foolish not to draft him at their spot. Maybe it says something that they didn’t trade up and therefore preferred Mac to Fields, but there’s no way Bill was going to pay multiple firsts like SF to control the after Lawrence pick.

I'll never understand why people are blaming Bill for not trading multiple firsts to pick either one of the bad QBs drafted ahead of Mac. The team would be in worse shape than it is now.

 

[Bongorific]

Even if he is fixable he was still a 6.99-7.0 guy, or to me, a guy you might be able to win with but he is not a game-changer.

I’m no QB evaluator, but the clips I watched from Alabama show a lot of wonky unbalanced throws as well. Perhaps people confuse his true skillset with “Pro Bowler” Mac Jones.