Mac Jones won the job as New England’s starting quarterback, putting the rookie will be under center when the Patriots kick off their 2021 NFL schedule against the Miami Dolphins on Sunday.
Was the former Alabama All-American surprised to be the choice over incumbent starter Cam Newton?
“Not really,” Jones said during a Tuesday appearance on WEEI-FM’s “Merloni and Fauria.” “I mean, like I always say, I prepare to be the starter, and every day you come in and I got the chance to get a lot of reps, so nothing really changes. Just trying to be a good teammate. Trying to learn the plays every day. Fix what I messed up on. Listen to (offensive coordinator) Josh (McDaniels) and all the guys in the quarterbacks room, and just take the advice like I always have since I have been here. Like I said, nothing really changes. It’s exciting.”
But maybe Jones should have been surprised, considering Patriots coach Bill Belichick’s track record with rookie quarterbacks.
Belichick has been the head coach for 459 NFL regular-season and playoff games. Only six times has Belichick started a rookie at quarterback.
“Mac has a lot of strengths,” Belichick said, “but we’re looking at a whole different level than what he was at, and so we’ll see how it goes in the NFL.”
In his final season with the Cleveland Browns in 1995, Belichick benched nine-year veteran Vinny Testaverde seven games into the season in favor of Eric Zeier, the team’s third-round draft choice from Georgia. But after four games with Zeier, Testaverde returned to the lineup.
In 2016, Belichick had to go with Jacoby Brissett in the third and fourth games of the season with Tom Brady serving an NFL suspension and Jimmy Garoppolo sidelined by an injury.
Belichick had Brady as his starting quarterback in 324 games. But even Brady didn’t start as a rookie. Instead, he played in one game and threw three passes in his first NFL season.
“When you’re a rookie, you have to earn your respect,” Jones said, “and I try to do that every day. When you’re young, whether you’re in college or the NFL, you just got to go in and work and then you earn the respect of your coaches, teammates, everyone in the whole organization or team. And you try to do that every day. It’s a daily grind and a daily battle, and it’s not anything you did in the past or anything you’re going to do in the future. It’s just doing today.”
Belichick said the biggest challenge for rookie quarterbacks such as Jones is “just the volume. Just the whole volume of what you have to deal with — the number of different coverages, different blitzes, different looks. And then I would say the difference in the passing game. Alabama had more of a pro-style passing game than most colleges, but the college passing game, generally speaking, isn’t very similar to the pro passing game, and so even though throwing the ball is throwing the ball, there’s a difference between throwing passing routes that require reading the defense and coverage and working through progressions versus reading a defensive end or reading numbers on bubble screens and plays like that, RPOs, and so a whole different concept of throwing the ball.”
Jones explained how he’d dealt with the challenge of adapting to a pro playbook as complex as the Patriots’.
“I kind of found stuff that works for me,” Jones said. “I have learned from a lot of older guys on the team. ‘Hey, how did you do this? How did you learn all these plays?’ It takes a little bit of time. I put in a lot of time when I first got here, and every day I stick to my schedule. And I just try and break it down, watch film but also focus on the things that we want to do.”
Since the Patriots released Newton on Aug. 31, the former NFL MVP has remained unsigned. Jones called Newton “a really good mentor.”
“Ever since I came here, we knew I was here to help him and he was here to help me,” Jones said, “so I never felt like we were butting heads or anything like that. Obviously, Cam’s a great guy, and he’s a great player, and, hopefully, he lands somewhere and gets a chance. But I definitely learned a lot from him.”
The Patriots and Dolphins are scheduled to kick off at 3:25 p.m. CDT Sunday at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts. CBS television affiliates in Alabama will broadcast the game.
“I think nerves are a good thing,” Jones told reporters on Wednesday. “You can always be nervous, but you can’t play nervous. I’ve always said that. It’s my first time out there, but at the same time, we’ve all been playing for a long time. And it’s all of us together, so it’s really not just a one-man show at all. It takes all 11 people, and I just got to really just focus and do my job each play and take it play by play.”
Mark Inabinett is a sports reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter at @AMarkG1.
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