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FOXBOROUGH – Mac Jones hasn't had the sophomore surge that many hoped he'd have this season.
The New England Patriots quarterback has thrown for 1,140 yards, four touchdowns, and seven interceptions, giving him a 76 passer rating, as he's missed three games due to a high ankle sprain.
Jones' struggles aren't exclusive to him though, at least on the Patriots' offense. New England ranks 26th in total offense and 25th in offensive DVOA. Several players, like Kendrick Bourne and Hunter Henry, have also seen a noticeable dip in stats this season as the Patriots have implemented a new offensive system with offensive line coach/senior advisor Matt Patricia and quarterbacks coach/offensive assistant Joe Judge replacing longtime offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels.
As the Patriots' offense looks to turn a corner entering their bye week, Jones was asked how he would evaluate improvement at the season's halfway mark.
“I think obviously everybody wants to improve as a player, every season you play football at whatever level it is,” Jones said Wednesday. “Wherever you start the season, you want to finish better. Obviously, you get a chance to evaluate halfway through the year usually or whenever your bye week is. Obviously, there’s individual things you want to improve, fundamentals, technique.
“You can look at statistics, but a lot of times there’s some false realities there. But that’s also stuff that you can look at, ‘hey, for team stuff, how many times are we doing this, running the ball, play action, screen?’ So, there’s a lot of things that coaches are looking at. Every team does that I’m sure, in some capacity. At the end of the day, like I said, if each individual player gets better, then we can kind of put that together as a team, and obviously as an offense and then kind of kick start the back half of the year here.”
Jones was pressed on if there's one thing in particular that he or the offense has improved in since training camp in July. After filibustering for a bit, the quarterback found an answer.
“Each week you want to access what you can do better, whether that’s your footwork, your accuracy, your placement for receivers catching and running,” Mac Jones said. “Those are all things that I feel like we’ve gotten better at as the year went on. It’s all about communication. We’ve definitely improved in that part of it, the communication, which is the most important piece. Once you do that, then you get the consistency, then you get the product that we want to put out on the field. Definitely working through that and the more we talk together, the more that we all see it as the same, then the better off we’ll be.”
One-handed!@JaquanBrisker gets the INT. 🙌
📺: #CHIvsNE on ESPN
📱: Stream on NFL+ https://t.co/2HQeNdaFPc pic.twitter.com/4r3PeOsdHe— NFL (@NFL) October 25, 2022
There certainly appeared to be some communication issues for the Patriots early on. Their offensive line played poorly during training camp and some of the sacks allowed in the first few games of the season looked like they were due to communication errors.
But issues with the offensive line have plagued the Patriots over the last two games – Jones' first two full games back since he injured his ankle in Week 3. New England's allowed 10 sacks over those two games, including six in Week 8 against the Jets (a career-high for Jones), and the Patriots have had a total of 24 plays go for negative yards during that stretch.
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Jones thinks that the bye week will help them reset, saying that “we did some good stuff at practice” on Wednesday. With a whole half of the regular season still left to play, Jones doesn't believe he nor the Patriots' offense are a finished product.
“I think every offense and every team is still going to be a work in progress,” Jones said. “At any level you’re constantly trying to get better, right? Unless you’re winning the championship, you’re not satisfied, right? So, everybody’s working. We’re all trying to just focus on today and get better, get better as a team.
“Obviously, as an offense, we want to score more points, no more turnovers and all that. We can control those things and if we can control it, then we need to take control of it. That’s one of the big things. There’s things that are out of your control and there’s things that you’re in control of. So just trying to focus on those things.”
One thing that Mac Jones believes will help the Patriots find their identity on offense is if he finds his open read quicker. He said that he thinks he does a good job of seeing the field, but he also believes he can do better at it, too.
This is the #NFL ???
This is 1 clip
There’s PLENTY more… pic.twitter.com/7prS9RYIxU
— Dan Orlovsky (@danorlovsky7) November 8, 2022
“We have a great offensive line. We’re working on the spacing and all those things, and that’s something that we need to improve on,” Jones said. “Me finding the open guy and start with my read, but also move through quicker and all of that stuff too. It’s a bunch of different things, but you can’t see everybody on every play. That’s every level of football.
“You got to kind of start somewhere and trust what other teams do. You can always go back and look at other teams and other offenses throughout the years of how they read certain plays. That’s kind of how it works, whether that was at Alabama or last year here. Now obviously doing those things, it’s ‘How can I put my eyes in the right spot to get the people the ball?'”
Mac Jones will get a few more practices next week to try and improve in that area before the Patriots take on the New York Jets in Week 11.
