Mac Jones made his NFL debut last Sunday.
But he didn’t enjoy it, he couldn’t because his Patriots lost 17-16.
That was quite evident in his postgame press conference and again on Wednesday when he met with the gathered local media at Gillette Stadium.
Make no mistake, the one-point defeat to the Dolphins motivates Jones as he heads into this week’s battle with the Jets in New York.
“It’s not fun to lose,” Jones said. “So just learning from what you could have done better is definitely just the only thing you can do, really. You can sit there and feel bad for yourself for a little bit, because you’re human and that’s what you are supposed to do or you’re in the wrong profession. You just have to move on. So the 24-hour rule. After 24 hours, some people it’s less, but for me after that just move on and play the next play, play the next game. You’re only as good as your last game. We lost. That’s what people will remember. So we just have to move forward.”
While feeling bad for himself and his team Sunday night, Jones also used the motivation of the loss to get to work. He admitted that he started studying the Jets mere hours after his first NFL game had concluded.
The 24-hour rule for feeling bad and an immediate jumping to work on the next opponent while the bruises from the prior game still settling in? The picture of Jones the competitor grows clearer by the week.
Earlier on Wednesday, teammate Hunter Henry became the latest to rave about Jones’ selflessness, a word that keeps coming up in regards to the Patriots rookie starting QB. Asked about that description, Jones admitted he wasn’t always that way. Coming from a family of very successful tennis players, he remembers being maybe a bit self-centered as a very young athlete.
“Overall it comes back to my family and what they’ve instilled in me, always being a team player,” Jones said. “I wasn’t necessarily that way when I was really young. I can honestly say that. Sometimes it was more about me than other people. That’s not how it should be. Ever since then I’ve just made it more about the team. Because that makes it more fun.
“It’s not about me and it never will be. And it shouldn’t be. Obviously as a quarterback everyone wants to hype you up and give you all this and that. Sometimes you need to take more blame than they give you and things like that. So I’ve always just tried to be humble and stuff. It just works out in the long run. That’s the best way to be the best teammate you can be.”
