1 – Long, long ago in a place very, very near, Tom Brady was a developing young quarterback with debatable physical skills leading an offense of even more debatable weapons.
Somewhere along the way in that development, after leading the Patriots to a stunningly unexpected Super Bowl win as a first-year starter and then leading the NFL in touchdown passes while missing the playoffs in his second season under center in New England, Brady began responding with an early career image-defining statement when asked who his favorite receiver was.
“The open one,” Brady would famously declare.
Recall that these were the days before Brady took the field with Hall of Fame GOATs like Randy Moss or Rob Gronkowski. Before he had elite young slot options like Wes Welker and Julian Edelman.
Sure, Brady had a 100-catch Troy Brown in 2001 and built productive rapports with young sidekicks like Deion Branch and David Givens.
His list of trusted targets also obviously included third down back Kevin Faulk and WEEI’s own tight end tandem of Jermaine Wiggins and Christian Fauria.
But without the blessings of truly elite, No. 1, go-to targets Brady had to spread the ball around. He had to go through is reads and progressions on each and every play to make accurate throws to lead a productive passing game. The onus was on TB12 to find that open receiver and get him the ball, not as he would do later in his career just throw the ball to Gronkowski and afterwards wonder, “How the f--- did you catch that?”
Fast forward to 2022 and that’s exactly what Patriots developing young quarterback Mac Jones will have to do to lead the New England passing game this fall. Jones must channel his inner Brady.
Despite the dramatic descriptions of dismal talent, New England has a depth chart of solid pass catchers heading into the new season.
Though there isn’t an All-Pro or even a Pro Bowler in the bunch, there is a decent breadth of complementary talent. DeVante Parker arrives to be a big outside presence with a 1,200-yard season on his resume in Miami. Jakobi Meyers returns after leading the team in catches a year ago, as does Kendrick Bourne to see if he can build on an impressive first year of playmaking in Foxborough.
Nelson Agholor would love to get closer to living up to his big contract, only a year removed from averaging nearly 19 years per reception for the Raiders. Second-round pick Tyquan Thornton has elite speed and clear potential, while Tre Nixon entered the conversation at the position with an impressive spring. Tight end includes Hunter Henry after his career-best nine touchdowns alongside Jonnu Smith and his athletic potential that never really came in to play a year ago.
That’s a lot of relatively talented options for Jones to look for on a play-by-play and game-by-game basis. A lot of matchups that could be won. A lot of reads that will need to be made.
No, Jones doesn’t have a guy like Edelman who he can target pre-snap on every critical third down. Nor does he have a physical freak like Moss or Gronkowski who he knows can beat the man across from him virtually any time he wants.
But Brady didn’t have those weapons early in his career, either. Back in those days the future Hall of Famer built a reputation and a winning formula finding the good-enough open receiver with productive regularity.
That’s exactly what Jones needs to do in 2022. It’s not the easiest way to play the quarterback position. It puts a lot of pressure on the guy under center on every play. But if Jones is the young man he’s been billed as – one of the most NFL-ready, savvy, heady, accurate passers to enter the league in recent years – he might just be the perfect young quarterback to make good with New England’s corps of targets that might just be good enough for now.
And then down the road maybe Jones will get his go-to options, the ones that every New England fan seems to clamor for and the kind that Brady got to work with when the statistical portion of his own career really began to take off with the arrival of Moss and Welker in 2007.
For now, though, Jones’ favorite, go-to receiver needs to be the open one.
2 – Every aspect of Jones’ life and development will be news in New England. That’s the reality of life as a starting quarterback in the NFL and certainly for a Patriots team looking to return to prominence and dominance with its young franchise leader.
As such, much has been made this spring about Jones’ physique and what he’s done to get in better shape for his sophomore season.
This week Jones spoke about the work he’s done in regards to his diet and his body, talking to NBS Sports Boston rather ironically at an event to promote a local ice cream brand.
“I made significant strides,” Jones said. “Fixing my body, feeling comfortable, feeling healthier and better. At the end of the day, you’re still a human and you want to eat what you want to eat, but you have to be disciplined.”
It’s obviously a good step for Jones to eat better, get in better shape and maybe make incremental strides in arm strength, even if he’s not exactly going all MJ10 Method on us. Those things will never hurt his development. But there is a better chance that any big strides he makes in production or even leadership in 2022 come from his experience, knowledge and confidence in what he’s doing. So while it’s easy to focus on the role Jones’ body will play, it’s his mind that will likely decide just how big of a Year 2 Jump he makes this fall.
3 – Much has been said and written about N’Keal Harry in his three disappointing seasons in New England. The former first-round pick – the only first-round wide receiver Bill Belichick has drafted in his time with the Patriots – finally saw his Foxborough career come to an end this week when he was traded to the Bears for a 2024 seventh-round pick, the NFL equivalent of a bag of scuffed up K-balls.
Why was Harry never able to find success in New England? Plenty of reasons – and excuses – have been offered up over the years and even this week. But the simplest answer is that Harry could never fulfill the simple criteria Belichick has often voiced for his receivers: get open and catch the football.
That failure is in interesting juxtaposition to Harry’s former 2019 rookie classmate Meyers. Harry was the first-round pick with all the supposed measurables who looks the part of a playmaking NFL receiver, yet he couldn’t get open and catch the football consistently. Meyers was too slow as an undrafted player, yet he somehow finds a way to get open and catch the football consistently.
Meyers’ career is going strong in New England as the team’s returning leading receiver and Harry’s NFL career is on life support.
It’s really that simple.
4 – While the inclination is to say that Harry’s time in the NFL is numbered, landing with the Bears might be the best possible chance he has to jumpstart the next phase of his career.
Chicago has limited talent at the wide receiver position to speak of, Harry sliding into the roster competition behind projected starters Darnell Mooney and former Chief Byron Pringle. The team also has a young, playmaking quarterback in Justin Fields who’s looking to find guys he can trust to make plays early in his career.
Given the very little Harry has done to date, it may not be a safe bet to rekindle his career in Chicago. But there will be an opportunity to fight for a job and a role. It’s not too hard to envision Fields scrambling on a broken play in practice or preseason action and finding the big-bodied Harry down the field for a connection. One or two plays like that might just build Harry’s confidence and build Fields’ confidence in him. Harry may never live up to his first-round draft status and maybe he really is the worst first-round pick of the Belichick era in New England, but landing in Chicago might be the best spot for him to try to salvage some semblance of a career.
5 – Projecting individual players’ production for the coming season is a fun part of the new year, whether for gambling purposes, fantasy football drafting or just as fans hoping to see their favorite player take his game to the next level. With that in mind, Bet Online promoted some of its player production prop odds this week, and the receivre position was particularly interesting from a Patriots perspective.
Maybe most interesting was that Bet Online offered over/unders on production for Parker and Meyers, but not for Bourne. Many inside Patriot Nation think Bourne might just be New England’s most underrated player, a guy who could break out in 2022 with increased opportunity after notching 55 catches for 800 yards and five touchdowns in his first season in Foxborough.
Bet Online set Parker’s line at 57.5 catches, 725.5 yards and 3.5 touchdowns, while Meyers was a bit higher in terms of receptions at 66.5 but the same in both yards and scores.
If Parker reaches the over on his production – which he last did in 2020 in Miami with 63 catches for 793 yards with four touchdowns – it will be a really good sign not just for his role in the Patriots’ offense but probably for the overall production of the New England attack as a whole.
Meanwhile Bourne might actually be the Patriots’ receiver to bet on this fall.
6 – Nary a negative word has been written or said about Devin McCourty during the defensive back’s impressive 12-year career in New England.
McCourty has been a respected captain, influential member of the community and critical last line of the Patriots’ defense on the field. He’s reached the Pro Bowl and second-team All-Pro status as both a cornerback and a safety. When he’s done playing the three-time Super Bowl champion is a lock for the Patriots Hall of Fame.
But it was a bit surprising this month when USA Today’s Touchdown Wire put together its list of top current NFL safeties and slotted McCourty at No. 3 overall. No disrespect to McCourty, but that feels way too high. While he’ll still be counted on to play a key role in the back end in New England in 2022, an argument can be made that McCourty may be the third-best safety on the Patriots roster by the end of the season. Kyle Dugger is a developing star heading into his third year, while Adrian Phillips has been very much underrated as a versatile cog in his last two seasons in New England.
It will even be interesting stop see what former first-round pick Jabrill Peppers does under Belichick’s watch when fully recovered from his torn ACL.
Has McCourty had a great career? Yes. Is he still a good player? Sure. Is he third-best safety in the NFL right now? Nope. But he is a veteran presence at what is probably the strongest position on the Patriots’ roster.
7 – Speaking of McCourty, Devin’s twin brother Jason announced his retirement from the NFL this week. Jason McCourty spent three of his 13 NFL seasons in New England with his brother from 2018-2020. The social media-sharing duo helped the team to its sixth Super Bowl title, beating the Rams in Super Bowl LIII. Jason McCourty made one of the key plays in that game, and in New England Super Bowl history, on a pass breakup of a late Jared Goff pass toward a wide-open Brandin Cooks in the end zone, batting away what appeared to be a sure game-changing touchdown for Los Angeles. Like his mainstay brother, Jason McCourty was a respected member of Patriot Nation –on and off the field – during his time in Foxborough. Though both McCourty brothers may have careers in the media on the horizon, with Jason getting a head start in that area this summer for NFL Network as he embarks on his post-playing days, Devin is still going strong for at least one more season in New England.