(Audacy Sports/WGR 550) - Place blame wherever you want, Mac Jones has been worse this year than last.
The New England Patriots are an abject disaster, sustaining two of the worst losses in Bill Belichick’s coaching history in consecutive weeks. After getting throttled 38-3 by the Dallas Cowboys last week, New England responded by getting pummeled at home, 34-0, by the New Orleans Saints.
Jones has gotten pulled from both games, though Belichick has committed to him as the starter going forward each time. The Patriots lack weapons for their quarterback, and the offensive line has been leaky. But Jones is still culpable with his suspect decision-making, causing turnovers left and right.
Regardless of what is around Jones, Boomer Esiason told "The Greg Hill Show" on WEEI in Boston on Monday the 25-year-old has taken a huge step back.
"I know [Belichick] said and mumbled [Sunday], 'start over, start over.' He’s never been here before," Esiason said. "That’s how great his career is, that’s how great his success has been. Tom Brady, he’s not walking through that door, Mac Jones has regressed significantly. He looks very skittish to me, that’s a word that was used down [in New York] to describe Eli Manning many years ago and has kind of stuck with us.
"There’s really nowhere else for them to turn. I mean, there isn’t. They have Bailey Zappe, they have him, they’re going to fight through it with [Jones], and it’s going to be basically a long slog for the rest of the season now."
To Esiason’s point, the Patriots don’t really have anywhere to turn. They could go with Zappe, which would probably be no more than a lateral move at best. In such a case, they're better off trying to get Jones on track. Any free agent quarterback likely won’t be an upgrade either, and will need to learn the system, and making a trade for a quarterback is all but certainly not happening.
The Patriots weren’t supposed to be in this position on offense. After the Matt Patricia-Joe Judge disaster last year, putting Bill O’Brien in place was supposed to help move things forward for Jones and the offense.
That’s not happening, and Esiason went as far as saying the Patriots now sit with the Carolina Panthers, New York Giants and Chicago Bears as the worst of the worst.
"I was a fan of [Jones’] too, and I thought last year he got a really raw deal because he didn’t have a legitimate offensive coordinator," Esiason said. "This year, he does have a legitimate offensive coordinator and it’s gotten worse. Now, I know he doesn’t have a lot of support around him, this is not the Miami Dolphins by any stretch of the imagination or what Brock Purdy is dealing with in San Francisco.
"But still, you just cannot play careless football and turn the football over, and that goes right back to his decision making and it goes back to him either holding onto the ball or not making clean and good decisions, and certainly not being accurate with the football."