On Sunday night at Gillette Stadium, Mac Jones will share the same field as Tom Brady and likely be compared to him at one point or another.
But in reality it won’t be the first time, or the last.
In the months leading up to the NFL draft this past May, Jones’ closest comparison to a quarterback already in the league was Brady. These people weren’t saying he was going to be the greatest of all-time, it’s just the two play the position almost the exact same. They are not the most athletic players and heavily rely on their smarts, accuracy and decisiveness to be succssful.
It’s no surprise that Jones has been studying Brady tape since elementary school and looked up to him a great deal as he moved on to high school. Friends relayed that Jones would often post to his Instagram story side-by-side photos of him throwing in practices or games and Brady, as they would look almost exactly the same.
“He really looked up to Brady,” Josiah Johnson, who played with Jones in high school, said. “I mean, who doesn’t at the quarterback position.”
And then once he got to Alabama, Jones tweeted out Brady’s combine picture next to a picture of himself, which served as a reminder that just because he may not look like an athletic quarterback, it doesn’t mean he couldn’t have success.
“He always looked at Brady as someone similar,” said Mac Hereford, a wide receiver at Alabama, who was good friends with Jones. “There were times where he mentioned Brady and the athletic thing and people doubting him, because I know people said he wasn’t athletic enough or whatnot.
“He definitely did talk about Tom Brady at times and used that photo as motivation or a comparison of look, here’s this guy who did it.”
One of Brady’s biggest strengths and what has made him so successful is how hard he works behind the scenes when it comes to preparation.
Well, Jones is giving him a run for his money.
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It started at The Bolles School, a private high school in Jacksonville, Florida where Jones attended for four years. It was clear he wasn’t like most other quarterbacks his age, even the advanced ones.
“His preparation is beyond a lot of other players I have seen in my life,” Johnson said.
He recalled Jones making excel spreadsheets that would show what percentage of time opposing defenses would run certain packages.
“He’s always been extremely bought in with studying the offense, but also studying what the defense is going to do against the offense,” Johnson said.
Ryan Walker, who is currently a tight ends coach at Grambling State University, was working with Jones at the DeBartolo Sports QB Academy when he was in high school.
It was clear Jones wasn’t one of his typical students, especially at such a young age.
“My fiancé, when we first started dating, she would be like who is calling you, who is texting you at midnight, 1 o’clock in the morning?,” Walker said. “And I would pick up the phone thinking it’s an emergency and [Mac] is talking about a certain look, coverage or pressure, or he would send me a film clip of someone on SportsCenter at 1 o’clock in the morning watching a highlight of any pro quarterback, like Drew Brees. He’d send me over the clip saying, ‘Hey, this is this [passing] concept. Is this right?’ And I looked at it and would chuckle a little bit. Obviously, I’d give him an answer, I give all those guys an answer if they are willing to put the work in, especially at at that hour.
“I think that is kind of normal for him. He breathes, eats and loves football like no other.”
That kind of stuff continued once Jones got to Alabama.
Hereford remembered many Saturday nights when most college kids were out at bars and partying where he would get a text from Jones asking to go to the indoor facility to run routes, even during the offseason.
“Mac Jones practices with purpose,” Hereford said. “We would go out there and it’s not like he would throw a couple of balls. He had purpose and intent with everything that he did. We would get out there and he would have a warmup and he would be locked in like it was a real game when it was just me and him in the indoor. Every rep was legit like it was a game.”
So legit that Jones was wearing his helmet, shoulder pads and even cleats to simulate a game as much as possible.
Jones demanded perfection, even in these late-night sessions.
“If he didn’t have a perfect ball, and I am talking perfect spiral literally at my chest, I would make him do it again,” said Hereford. “We laughed about it, but he did it every single time. He wanted to do it. If it wasn’t exactly right he wanted to do it over and over until he got it right.”
No matter what time of day, place or circumstance, Jones was always ready to get some throws in.
There was a Sunday night following a SEC championship banquet in Birmingham, Alabama and the team was getting off the bus walking back to their dorms and apartments and Hereford heard a voice off in the distance, “Hereford, let’s go get some throws in.”
It was Jones.
“I was literally in my suit running full-on routes,” Hereford recalled.
Even when Jones wasn’t doing something football related, it was still on his mind.
Early on in his college days he would be playing Fortnite on Xbox Live with his teammates, and he would turn to Hereford and bring up football.
“'What are you doing when you’re at the X? You run that route because if the DB comes down, you do this,'” he recalled Jones saying. “His brain never really turned off from football.”
That drive for perfection carried over onto the practice field.
Nick Saban had a saying, “don’t do things until you get it right, do things until you can’t get it wrong." No one exemplified that more than Jones.
“He remembers every single pass in practice that he didn’t like or any bad read and he would get me to go through them with him after every practice,” said Hereford.
Often times it would be for upwards of 30 minutes after a long practice that Jones would keep him on the field to make sure everything was the way he wanted it.
But what makes Jones special is he can be this into football, but still able to just hang out with his teammates and have fun like a regular guy.
“The thing I love about Mac is he has the ability to mix intensity with being one of the guys,” Hereford said. “That is what is really, really special. You could have a dude who is intense, but he’s a dude who is intense and able laugh with others, make jokes in the locker room and still have fun. The most intense people I know are locked in and super serious, and that’s not him.”
All that hard work off the field has translated to when it matters most and got Jones to where he is today.
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Playing in as many big games as Jones has, you’d think he’d show some signs of being nervous, even just a little behind the scenes with his teammates.
Nope.
Being as prepared as he is, there’s nothing he hasn’t seen or thought about.
“It’s watching it to the point where you know every little thing about your opponent, which builds up that confidence,” Hereford said. “That is how Mac Jones prepares. Whatever team he team he’s playing, you could be confident he knows almost everything about every DB. There’s a viral tweet where he called out every single player on Missouri’s team, and the backups. It’s just wild.”
Walker added: “Just the fact that he prepares just as much, if not more than the coaches. He’s the other coach on the field is the best way to put it. And that’s how it’s supposed to be as a quarterback. That is what we’ve always preached. You’re the coach on the field.
“The fact that he’s a film junkie, and at the end of the day the defenses are going to revert back to what they are comfortable with. So to a certain point, they are only going to give you so many looks and so many different presentations. If you’re prepared for that, you know the checks and balances with what you’re supposed to do, and that leads to the success that he’s having.”
So when Jones is compared to Brady at some point Sunday night, some of it may be unfair, but when it comes to his work ethic, it’s perfectly OK.
Jones can go toe-to-toe with anyone.