Mac Jones has made his point. The Alabama standout doesn’t care about individual accomplishments. He only cares about the football team. It’s enough to make Bill Belichick coo with joy.
But you can still take the football, kid.
On Sunday, Jones memorably passed up the opportunity to take home his first career touchdown pass — a 7-yard strike to Nelson Agholor late in the second quarter. After the game, Jones said his first career touchdown isn’t important, and then quickly transitioned to Belichick speak: we gotta play better, coach better, blah blah.
“That doesn’t really matter. It’s one touchdown,” Jones told reporters, including WEEI’s Ryan Hannable. “We've got to score more. It’s not like the game was over right there. We gotta do better in the red zone and get more touchdowns. And we will.”
On Merloni & Fauria Monday, Jones reiterated his point: wins are more important than rookie milestones. “Being early in the game, I just told them, ‘take it back,’ because I knew we had to score more points,” he said. “We can definitely do a better job of that. It was good to throw my first touchdown and all, but at the end of the day, I’ve just to keep getting better, so we can score more touchdowns.”
Jones came out of a very controlled environment in Tuscaloosa, where players undergo intensive media training and come out sounding like cliché machines. They call it the “Alabama lobotomy,” longtime Crimson Tide beat writer Michael Casagrande told me earlier this year.
Nick Saban, much like Belichick, preaches the value of austerity. We can surmise Jones was probably advised to sidestep attention and adulation.
But to repeat, you can still take the football! Nobody would think Jones was selfish if he wanted to keep a memento from his first career NFL game. It doesn’t get much better than your first touchdown pass.
Jones already looks like he’ll thrive in New England. He was decisive and accurate against the Dolphins, completing 74% of his throws — he second-best completion percentage ever out of 61 rookies to attempt at least 30 passes in their first career start. If you squinted, you could faintly see No. 12 back there, such as when Jones dropped a third-down throw right in James White’s outstretched arms.
On top of Jones’ comfort in the pocket, he seems to have poise. That’s another byproduct of playing at Alabama. He’s been in big games before.
With that in mind, maybe Jones truly doesn’t view his first career touchdown as special. But it would be OK if he did.
Everybody would understand, including Belichick himself.
