Mac Jones has had a rough sophomore year in the NFL, and he increasingly sounds like he’s in search of the swagger he carried as a senior at Alabama – back when he was a Championship-winning, cigar-smoking, touchdown-slinging dude.
Good. Mac Jones should be on a mission back to that Mac.
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This is not to say Jones ever had the effortless confidence exuded by, say, Joe Burrow, but the guy looked significantly more self-assured at this same time last season with another Patriots team that sat at 3-4.
He’s been through a humbling couple of months. He lost his North Star in Josh McDaniels, gained a coaching system that seems to be offensive coordination by committee, and was asked to learn at least some complicated aspects of a new system. Then he suffered a high ankle sprain in Week 4, had his screaming face plastered on every paper and website for meme-ification, and watched the third-string quarterback one year his junior lead the team to back-to-back victories. His name was dragged through the mud in a fake report. He went three drives in Monday Night Football and was booed by his home crowd and yanked in the first half.
And it’s not even Halloween.
After a Monday game akin the ending of Braveheart, Jones used a phrase he hasn’t tossed out in quite a while. It’s kind of a weird one:
“I'll play better and watch the tape and figure out, kind of go back to my bucket system, what do I need to do better and what am I doing okay. I'm going to do that again here.”
The “bucket system” is a mental exercise the quarterback described last season in which he categorizes things he does well and things he needs to work on.
He returned to the podium again Wednesday for the weekly quarterback press conference and used another metaphor not heard in a bit to describe his communication with coach Bill Belichick:
“He’s been very open with me, and that’s the important part. That’s all you can ask for, right? Just clear communication, going out there, and putting all the other rat poison away.”
Rat poison! He harkened back to the old slogan used by Alabama coach Nick Saban to describe outside noise like the Media.
It’s likely this writer is reading way too deeply into a few choice phrases by a young quarterback, but it does hint at a level of introspection and reflection from a guy who’s going through it. He sounds like a player who’s been rattled and needs to remind himself he’s been the guy before, and he can be the guy again here.
There’s this scene in the classic sports film “D2: The Mighty Ducks” where coach Gordon Bombay has lost his way. He’s gone Hollywood. He’s dating a staff member from the evil Icelandic team his beloved midwestern Ducks are facing. After seeing who he’s become, he laces up a pair of ultra-90s rollerblades and skates around the Venice Beach boardwalk with a hockey stick to re-center himself. It’s not really a good metaphor for what Mac Jones has gone through but it’s a great family-friendly movie and last minute Halloween costume, and it’s nice to think that Jones might be putting on an old Alabama crewneck and watching his 2020 highlights.
Because he’s still got a long road ahead of him, and a long career if he can muscle through this sophomore slump. Let this be Jones’ rock bottom. The coaching staff should be pumping his tires and taking what worked with Bailey Zappe under center and injecting more of it into Jones’ repertoire. And for God’s sake, some RPOs like Jones ran at Alabama.
There’s still time for this road to lead back home for the young quarterback.
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