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FOXBOROUGH – New England Patriots quarterback Mac Jones' second NFL season hasn't gotten off to the best start.
The Patriots quarterback has completed 64.6 percent of his passes for 465 yards with two touchdowns and two interceptions, giving him an 83.2 passer rating through the first two games. Jones' numbers in all of those categories rank him in the bottom half of all starting quarterbacks to this point.
In Sunday's win over the Steelers, Jones made another interesting decision on a pass to DeVante Parker. He launched a deep throw to the veteran receiver on a third-and-5 play instead of possibly finding a receiver closer to the third-down mark. Jones' pass didn't give Parker much of a chance to make a grab, so Steelers safety Minkah Fitzpatrick grabbed the ball instead for the interception.
Minkah Fitzpatrick is on a mission this season 👀
pic.twitter.com/6K9Mgqk2ey— PFF (@PFF) September 18, 2022
It marked the second straight week that Jones threw an interception on a deep pass to Parker. In Week 1, he tried to connect with Parker on a deep fade toward the end zone. However, Dolphins corner Xavien Howard batted the ball toward safety Jevon Holland for the pick.
Now that Jones has had some time to assess his bad throws (and good throws) through the first two games, he won't get too hard on himself for bad plays he might have made in a winning effort.
Intercepted by @HollywoodVon! #FinsUp
📺: #NEvsMIA on CBS
📱: Stream on NFL+ https://t.co/F3er9mxUz9 pic.twitter.com/lsK9HSTwmc— NFL (@NFL) September 11, 2022
“There’s not really any bad tape,” Jones said Wednesday. “I think there’s things that you want to have back but if you win the game, you can sit there and complain about plays you wish you had back, but at the end of the day, you won, and that’s what’s important. It’s not about always winning super pretty all the time, it’s about winning, so that’s all I care about, all I’ve ever cared about. All the other stuff takes care of itself.
“Obviously, like I said, you want to put good plays stacked on top of each other and you need to have more consistency with that, but the really bad plays are coming down to a bit more slim. That’s the goal and you can do that each week and then improve. The wins will come and that’s the only thing that matters.”
The 50/50 passes Jones has thrown so far this season have been a bit frequent. There were obviously the two interceptions he threw, but there was also the touchdown pass deep along the sideline to Nelson Agholor against the Steelers.
Jones said that he has faith in the Patriots' playmakers to make plays like Agholor did on Sunday on 50/50 throws. He believes that having 50/50 throws as part of the offense is “great.” He also explained that he has faith in the coaching staff that they're doing the right thing if they ask for him to make such a throw on a play, even if it results in an interception that makes him look bad.
“I think just for me, the biggest thing is, what's the play and what's the purpose of the play? As long as I know the purpose, I have the green light to do what I'm supposed to do,” Jones said. “If I don't know the purpose and we still call it, we're probably just trying to see the play and there's other reasons why we're trying to do it. So for me that's always been my thing is what do you want me to do as the quarterback to make this a successful play?
“You have to trust the coaches and allow them to work. That's what they do really well, is scheme up things and put you in a good position. They're never going to put me in a bad position. That's their job. My job is to run what they're doing and do it really well. So, we have confidence in it. We want to continue to grow and do things even better as players.”
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NELSON AGHOLOR MOSSED 'EM 😤 @brgridiron
WHAT A CATCH.
(via @NFL)pic.twitter.com/wGbr4CaOqd
— Bleacher Report (@BleacherReport) September 18, 2022
The Patriots have had some growing pains working with their new offensive coaching staff as they deploy some new schemes to revamp the system that was in place for much of the last 22 seasons. In Sunday's game, the Patriots called a few run-pass options for Jones, which he ran a fair amount of during his time in college.
Jones said Wednesday that “I like RPOs. They're cool” and shared a story from his days at Alabama as to why he likes them.
“I think it puts stress on the defense,” Jones said. “I definitely learned in college just watching Coach [Nick] Saban sometimes explode at practice. Just knowing he's trying to tell somebody to do something but his guy's running a route but then it's also a run. Is it a pass? So there's a lot of cool grey area there from an offensive perspective.
“I've always, obviously we didn't run them in high school, I ran the wing T. They were new to me at Alabama. I've seen teams run them on film. Some teams do it right. Some teams do it in interesting ways. You can't really ever tell if it's an RPO, or a play-action sometimes. It's kind of an interesting play.”
Even though Jones' stats suggest he isn't playing too well in the Patriots' offensive system, there's only one area that he looks at to see if he's improving.
“Every week you’re trying to improve,” Jones said. “I’d say we improved from Week 1 to Week 2 and it’s not just me, it’s everybody. We all improved and got better. We got a lot of games and we got a big one this week. That’s all you can judge yourself on is your last game. We won our last game, so that’s all that matters and the next week is the next week. That’s all you can focus on.
“I'm not sure about the stats and stuff, I don’t really look at them. I don’t have much information there for you, the only one, like I said, it’s either a W or an L and that’s the only one that matters.”
Jones and the Patriots will look to continue that improvement into Week 3, when they host the Baltimore Ravens.
