"Zappe Fever" might be on the verge of another outbreak sooner than you think.
Following conflicting reports about the Patriots shopping Mac Jones to other teams and rumors of tension between the young quarterback and head coach Bill Belichick, the hype around backup quarterback Bailey Zappe appears to be growing again.
Longtime sports broadcaster and podcast host Dan Patrick addressed the recent trade rumors surrounding Jones and whether or not it could signal New England planning to take a run at Lamar Jackson -- or perhaps turn to their backup -- on his show Wednesday.
"I do think that locker room is split," Patrick said. "Somebody who used to play for the Patriots -- I asked, 'Could you find out how that feels in the locker room?' When he came back to me probably four days later, he said, 'There's a lot of support for Bailey Zappe.'
"But that doesn't mean they're ready to turn the team over to Bailey Zappe. Bailey Zappe was a great college quarterback, put up a lot of yards there. But you spent the 15th pick in the first round on Mac Jones. You can't whiff on that."
Patrick also cast on the possibility of teams showing much interest in Jones as a trade acquisition -- "When [Belichick] moves on, that's when I move on too" -- and didn't anticipate New England getting the desired first-round pick in return for Jones.
That, combined with their apparent hesitance to swing for Lamar Jackson, suggests the Patriots are likely to stick with Jones this year and hope for improvement on his end. But Zappe, by all accounts, seems like he'll get a chance to the third-year quarterback and steal the starting job.
To that end, Devin McCourty, who's been a staunch Mac Jones supporter, admitted on WEEI's "The Greg Hill Show" the team was split at times during last season between Jones and Zappe.
"I think there were some guys in the locker room that were like, ‘Let’s go with Zappe.’ Or, ‘No, Mac looked good today,’" McCourty said. "It was just a back-and-forth, which to me, spoke more about what we had on offense than the quarterback. We never were solidified as an offensive group that guys had full confidence in anything we were doing.
There was never true hope.”
Obviously, that situation won't feel as hopeless as it did last year now that Bill O'Brien is helming the offense, but the discord from the bizarre handling of the quarterback position in 2022 apparently still lingers to an extent. The Patriots will need to work to unify things a bit in 2023 behind Jones -- or Zappe if he seems to indeed be the better player.