What is going on with Bill Belichick and the New England Patriots? Ever since Tom Brady's departure, the team has struggled to find any sort of consistency. One of the biggest questions surrounding the team is at QB. In 2021, it felt like Mac Jones would be the long-term answer for them at the position. After a rocky 2022 that saw Jones butt heads with coaches, that's not certain anymore. In fact… Mac Jones' antics may have angered Bill Belichick, according to insider Tom Curran.
“As we know, a disloyalty in Bill’s mind is almost worse than bad play,” Curran said in an interview with WEEI. “Mac [Jones], even though you could say it’s ironic because he’s trying to get better and he’s wondering ‘Are we (Patriots) supposed to be doing it this way?’ And he’s asking around the football world about it. That effort to improve was showing up the Matt Patricia-Joe Judge contingent that Bill put in charge. When Bill caught wind of it — he’s still pissed about it.”
Mac Jones was visibly frustrated at Matt Patricia's play calling, and we saw that multiple times in the 2022 season. The Patriots QB aired his frustrations on the field and even off the field. It seems that this may have annoyed Belichick, who was responsible for putting Patricia and Judge as the offensive coordinator and QB coach of the Pats offense.
Not that Patricia and Judge did any coherent coordination on offense. The Patriots offense ranked 26th in total yards in 2022, and were routinely one of the most inefficient offenses on a week-per-week basis. It wasn't just Jones who aired his frustration: WR Kendrick Bourne also called out the team at one point last year. Everyone saw that this experiment was going to be a failure, except for Belichick itself it seems.
The Patriots' futility at offense last season led them to search for a new offensive coordinator. They landed on someone who is intimately familiar with the Pats way: Bill O'Brien. O'Brien was the leader of the many New England offenses that routinely won Super Bowls in the last two decade. Now, we'll see if O'Brien's success will carry over to a relatively young and inexperienced QB in Mac Jones versus the legend of Tom Brady.