During the New England Patriots' 24-10 loss to the Buffalo Bills on Thursday, Mac Jones showed his frustration with the play-calling, using multiple expletives to demonstrate his emotion while on the sideline during the loss.
Jones not only explained his frustration following the loss, but he also said he wanted “accountability” and that he wants “to be coached harder.”
As the Patriots' offense continues to struggle under first-year offensive play-caller Matt Patricia, Jones explained Monday on WEEI's “Merloni, Fauria & Meggo” what he meant by saying that he wanted to be coached harder.
“We're all super competitive. Any time it doesn't look good on film, we want to be coached hard,” Jones said. “That's what our coaches are going to do. It's everybody being accountable. That’s the definition of tough coaching – it's hard conversions. If something may have not gotten right with a player, ‘hey, you did this wrong.' As a player, it’s ‘ok, how can I fix it?' I think our coaches have done that and we have to lock into that and ‘alright, what’s the problem and how can I solve it?'”
“We understand it's us the players. We have to trust the coaches, which we are,” Jones added. “They put a lot of hard work into it. That's what we have to do. It's a player's game. We want to come together and play together.”
Mac Jones is having the time of his life under Matt Patricia pic.twitter.com/u4joRkGxHQ
— Will Brinson (@WillBrinson) December 2, 2022
New England's offense has taken a major step back this season with Patricia being the de facto replacement for Josh McDaniels as the team's offensive play-caller and Joe Judge becoming the quarterbacks coach. The Patriots rank 24th in yards and 20th in scoring. They're particularly struggled in big play situations, too, ranking 25th in third down conversions and are tied for last in red zone efficiency.
Despite all of that, Mac Jones believes the Patriots are “close” after watching the tape, but they've got to “eliminate” the plays, which he said there are “a handful of plays that just aren’t very good.”
One way to get rid of those bad plays is to have difficult conversations, which Jones is fine with having.
“Those are conversations that we have and that's internal and you want to be able to have those with your position coach or Matty P, coach Belichick, coach Judge,” Jones said. “It's not fun at the time. Like, ‘Hey, you didn't do this right or it didn’t look as good in practice.' You have to have [those conversions]. I feel like we have to do that more often and work through the problems. There’s obviously things we want to get better at, but that’s part of life.
“We’re all on the same page in that regard,” Jones added.
The Patriots dropped to 6-6 on the season following their Week 13 loss, which led Jones to rightly say they “aren’t in a bad spot.| However, they could be soon if they don't get on the same page and execute correctly. The Patriots have two West Coast games against the Arizona Cardinals and Las Vegas Raiders coming up before facing three teams currently in the playoffs in the AFC (Cincinnati Bengals, Miami Dolphins, and Bills) to close out the season.
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