So instead of 4 wins they may get 6-7 with Mayfield at best with this roster. That’s still stuck in purgatory.
The Michael McCorkle "Mac" Jones Thread
- Thread starter SeoulSoxFan
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I see the rumors about how Belichick brought up the idea of trading Mac (surely leaked by Bill’s camp), but where is it reported that he wanted Mayfield?
There's no such thing as purgatory in the NFL. 2-15 teams have as much difficulty climbing back into playoff contention as 8-9 teams. And Bills fans may be wishing for purgatory about now....
Agree that swapping Mac for Mayfield adds only a couple of wins. However, perhaps bringing in Mayfield would have changed how Bill looked at the draft and free agency, so no guarantees the rest of the roster would be the same.
Mac literally couldn't throw passes to his right this past season. With Mayfield they are a playoff contender, maybe 9-8 or so.
THAT's how bad Mac was.
Obviously nothing happens in a vacuum, but the QB is the most important position on the field and Mac was absolutely 100% responsible for the poor play this year.
He is the single biggest reason why Bill Belichick is out of a job this offseason. And now he's doubling down on the "woe is me, this isn't my fault" bullshit. It's gross, it's unprofessional....dammit it's unAmerican.
He should never be forgiven for that.
Bill Belichick making the playoffs with this fucking clown as a rookie QB should be proof enough of his total greatness as a head coach.
And yet Bill is the guy who bet heavily on him, not bothering to have another guy he trusted at QB in the organization.
And given Mac's quotes and the leaks from his side since the end of the season, that was 100% the correct way to handle him because it's CRYSTAL CLEAR that Mac cannot handle any competition or adversity at all, so removing such competition or adversity and just naming him the starter was the ONLY way to get Mac playing as best as he could.
Because clearly once Mac started sucking and Zappe got more reps, Mac simply sulked. He's mama's special boy!
There is NO overstating how mentally weak Mac is. He cannot handle anything going wrong. He's a frontrunner, and a bad teammate, and mentally soft. And if Mayo has him remotely near the team next year, it will be the surest sign of failure I can possibly see.
I'll blame Belichick for one thing for sure: drafting this jackass in the first place, and then not sticking to his guns and trading him over Kraft's objections last offseason assuming the Wickersham report is true.
EDIT: I know I get carried away with the rhetoric, but honestly Mac's behavior disgusts me. It's completely unprofessional.
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Mac leaking stories to try to sully BB as a means to bolster himself is about the dumbest approach I can imagine. He'd be well served to shut up, work on his craft and try to actually perform on the field. This is professional sports. You get judged by results. No one cares whose fault it is. Also, BB brought elation to this region for two decades. You pooped your pants for the better part of three years, which led in large part to a messy departure for BB. Guess whose side we're going to be on?
Sports fandom (for me) essentially boils down to rooting for guys I like and/or respect. He's neither.
Sports fandom (for me) essentially boils down to rooting for guys I like and/or respect. He's neither.
Couldn't have known pre-season about the O-line injury apocalypse. They won 8 the year before, a QB upgrade has you thinking about 9, 10 wins and then you're in the playoffs where who knows what can happen.
This is the part that gets me. And while QB is what killed them, they also brought in no help at tackle and it killed them too. That’s where I start to question the process.
Overall, I blame Mac more than any single other factor. But the player evaluations have been horrible also and have to be the second biggest factor. Juju/Jacobi was a mistake too. But, at least they tried to improve with the move, even if they were wrong. Tackle and QB I don’t understand how they didn’t try to address major flaws.
Being a huge BB fangirl and Mac hater I've quite enjoyed your posts lol
Blaming bb not having a backup on Mac is too far.
if bb thought the only chance for Mac to succeed was to have no one else that’s his fault.
“ I know my guy sucked but I didn’t bring in anyone else in hopes that he might suck less” is really dumb. Don’t get me wrong Mac was absolutely abysmal but bb and Kraft both need to take heat for not having a backup plan.
They signed like 6 tackles and they all got hurt. The O-line had terrible injury luck this year.
None of them were particularly great, but yeah they should have had plenty of at least moderate NFL caliber OT depth and it all went kaput.
Dammit. It is Un-American and I will not let Mac bad-mouth America!!!
One of the things I've learned over the years is that you make decisions based upon the best information available. The best information available when they picked Mac Jones overwhelmingly pointed to picking Mac Jones. The best information available when they cut Cam in favor of Mac pointed to cutting Cam in favor of Mac.
There wasn't too much early on to suggest the Jones would not only stop developing, but to digress in a way that was Eason-esque.
Best information available now points to jettisoning Jones in favor of whomever gets picked #3.
Mac's QB coach told him to ask for a trade after his rookie year
https://www.boston.com/sports/new-england-patriots/2024/01/29/mac-jones-new-england-patriots-trade-bill-belichick/?p1=hp_secondary
https://www.boston.com/sports/new-england-patriots/2024/01/29/mac-jones-new-england-patriots-trade-bill-belichick/?p1=hp_secondary
‘Because that’s allowed and that’s within the rules’
A modern day Whitman. Not exactly ‘what are your hopes what are your dreams’ but there’s SOSH meme potential there.
A modern day Whitman. Not exactly ‘what are your hopes what are your dreams’ but there’s SOSH meme potential there.
Lol... the team spent a ton of money on WRs and TEs, it got my mediocre mid-1st QB to the playoffs on a team coached by the best ever.... commentators were all waxing rhapsodic about what a great job they did with a rookie QB..... and I told him time to ask for a trade!
We have a BB thread where we can critique all things BB. This is the Mac Jones thread - we are getting steered off course imo.
Without even getting into value judgements about Mac Jones as a person, he has demonstrated that at best he is a fringe NFL player thus far into his career. I am very sympathetic to the argument that he was essentially set up for failure with the Patriots but that has happened to a lot of players in New England as well as elsewhere. The typical process is to work hard and find someone else to give you a shot, not get those in your camp to issue some backwards looking narrative. Maybe this is wrong but it really feels like this approach is potentially costly for Jones going forward. Who wants to work with this person?
Without even getting into value judgements about Mac Jones as a person, he has demonstrated that at best he is a fringe NFL player thus far into his career. I am very sympathetic to the argument that he was essentially set up for failure with the Patriots but that has happened to a lot of players in New England as well as elsewhere. The typical process is to work hard and find someone else to give you a shot, not get those in your camp to issue some backwards looking narrative. Maybe this is wrong but it really feels like this approach is potentially costly for Jones going forward. Who wants to work with this person?
Everything we've seen from Mac in his career indicates that in fact that's the only way he can succeed. He sulks otherwise.
They went into the season with one of the better (admittedly not super reliable) LT’s in the league and enough warm bodies at RT to think they could make it work.
Not sure what the alternatives were? The big money free agent tackle contracts from last years all look bad in retrospect and I would argue (strongly) Gonzalez was a better use of a 1st round pick than the tackles available there.
There wasn’t a single tackle (or guy who played tackle and wasn’t a conversion) taken between White and Mapu worth taking. You have to go all the way to Blake Freeland (one pick before Jake Andrews) or Dawand Jones (slid for a reason, can’t play LT would he actually have been better than Onwenu?) before you find another tackle that was useful last year.
I agree with the idea that Belichick didn’t do enough over the past few years to draft and develop tackle talent beyond hoping Wynn could stay healthy but a lot of that is just the way the draft classes have fallen. There haven’t been many good tackles coming out of school and many of the guys who are passable NFL players were hardly great prospects. Although the Tyquan Thornton slot would have made a ton of sense to go for a developmental tackle as there were a few on the board at that time.
Tackle play across the league is abysmal right now. The Pats, on paper, had a decent OL going into camp last year. Not great but solidly in line with what most teams were rolling out. Everything went wrong and yeah that sucks for Mac (and BB ultimately) but I don’t know that the 2022 off-season really presented many opportunities where they could have had obvious and logical upgrades.
Mac and his support team (agent, Qb coach etc) are kidding themselves if they think any starting QB in this league can count on coaching stability, good OL play and high end receiving weapons year to year. It exists but it’s rare, even rarer to have all 3 of those things at once. Overcoming adversity is part of what separates good QB from all the rest, it’s a critical part of the skillset and one Mac seemingly doesn’t have or doesn’t want.
As much as his personality comes off poorly, it’s such a QB starved league that he will get a few more chances but he’s not going to succeed anywhere unless he gets used to the idea that his chances are going to probably come from bad teams and less than ideal situations
Actually I think his chances are going to be mostly backup jobs for pretty good teams. Like I could see him as the Sam Darnold replacement in SF. I don't think a bad team wants to take on a lower upside guy like him now that they've seen his limitations in the league.
For better or worse this asshole will be in camp this year because a) nobody is going to trade for him and b) it doesn't make sense to cut him before camp.
everything we've seen, as you'd probably be the first to note, indicates he can't succeed even then. Not having a backup is inexcusable stupidity--and I'm still a keep BB guy.
Honest question-does that personal QB coach interview make the locker room look at him sideways? My gosh he comes across to me as such a bratty prima donna just based on that, I can't imagine respecting him much anymore if I was his teammate. But I'm not a pro football player, maybe they couldn't care less.
I mean, I assume they already do, they're just not going to say anything publicly because you don't do that especially about a QB.
Well outside of accuracy, mobility, decision-making, leadership.., Mac does bring fire. Usually in the form of "fire him into the sun". But fire.
