Does Patriots head coach Bill Belichick really still have a decision left to make in regards to his team’s starting quarterback job, or is he just messing with us and Miami coach Brian Flores now?
In the aftermath of New England’s preseason finale Sunday evening at Met Life Stadium – a 22-20 victory over the Giants to finish August action 3-0 – Belichick was asked if he’d decided who will start at quarterback for his team on Sept. 12 in the regular season opener against the Dolphins.
“No, we still have a lot of decisions to make,” Belichick declared. That may be true, but quarterback doesn’t feel like one of them.
It was a characteristically strange answer from the man who labeled veteran incumbent Cam Newton as New England’s starter verbally both on draft night in April and early in training camp. The guy who’s given last year’s starter the first reps in every drill of every practice he was available for this summer and closed out the preseason with a third straight game in which Newton started but saw relatively limited reps before giving way to upstart, developing first-round rookie quarterback Mac Jones.
Newton completed 2 of 5 passes for 10 yards for in two series of action against the Giants with an unfortunate interception off the hands of Jakobi Meyers on his final throw of the night.
Jones took over from there, completing 10 of 14 passes for 156 yards with a nice touchdown pass to Kristian Wilkerson, leading scoring drives on three of his six possessions before giving way to Brian Hoyer in the fourth quarter.
Newton finished the preseason, his three starts, completing 14 of his 21 passes for 162 yards with one touchdown, the tough-luck interception and no sacks. It’s the kind of limited action many an entrenched starter across the NFL saw this summer.
Jones, by comparison, completed 36 of 52 passes in second-fiddle summer duty for 388 yards with one touchdown, no interceptions and five sacks, including four against New York when he admitted he held the ball too long. The kind of numbers many a back across the NFL saw this summer.
Newton has to be New England’s starter, doesn’t he?
At this point if he’s not, the former MVP and No. 1 overall pick has a strong argument that he wasn’t given enough reps, enough preseason action to truly compete and show his stuff in his second season in Foxborough.
That can’t be the case for a Belichick-manipulated competition, can it?
More likely is that Newton was treated as a true starter despite all the talk-radio debate and fan-driven fodder this summer about the supposed competition, a young-vs.-old battle that Belichick himself called “healthy” and one that would leave him with a “hard decision.”
But was it?
Doesn’t seem like it.
A few days after Newton returned to his first-team reps in joint practice work with the Giants following an NFL-mandated five-day absence due to COVID protocols stemming from what Belichick and the team called a “misunderstanding,” the veteran quarterback was not made available to the media Sunday night.
But his apparent backup, the rookie Jones was.
With Newton’s never-ending summer lock on the first-team reps complete aside from Jones’ couple days filling in during the unvaccinated veteran’s COVID-related absence, Jones was asked if he still was preparing like he might be the starter against the Dolphins on opening day.
“Yeah, I’ve learned at a young age to just prepare like the starter,” Jones said.
That’s the proper, politically correct answer. But it’s also probably a pipe dream at this point. It seems it’s not what Belichick has or may have ever had in mind. Jones was never given that chance.
Newton was first in line to open the spring. He was first in line to open training camp. He started all three Patriots preseason games. He’s been treated like the starter at every step of the way.
All while Jones performed as well or better while earning more mostly lower-end reps with regularity on the practice field and in game action.
All the while Belichick was talking up Newton’s starting status and an open competition out of both sides of his mouth.
Now, the GOAT coach is suddenly tight-lipped about his starter as his team transitions to closed practices for two weeks leading up to the battle with the former New England defensive assistant Flores’ Miami squad?
Belichick may be pretending he hasn’t decided who is quarterback is, but Flores better be preparing for Newton.
Although maybe he can’t completely rule out seeing Jones on the Gillette Stadium turf on opening day, either.
And that’s just the way Belichick likes it, even if many of the rest of us may not.
