New England Patriots quarterback Mac Jones wasn’t exactly the Mad Bomber on Sunday against the New York Jets.
The box-score stats show he completed 24-of-35 passes for 194 yards with one touchdown and one interception. Advanced passing stats put his average air yards per completion – that is, the yards the football traveled in the air past the line of scrimmage on completions – at 2.5.
· THURSDAY NIGHT: JALEN HURTS, EAGLES RISE TO 8-0
· TUA TAGOVAILOA A WINNER AT THE TRADE DEADLINE
· ALABAMA-ROOTS PLAYERS DOMINATE OCTOBER NFL AWARDS
But after delivering a 22-17 victory over an AFC East rival in his first full game in a month, Jones shared the philosophy of the offensive-line coach on his high school football team.
“He used to call me Sunshine,” Jones said on Wednesday, “so he would say like, ‘Sunshine, you’ll never go broke taking a profit.’ So we ran the wing-T, so if the back was open, give it to him and let him get the 5, 10 yards and good things will happen.”
Jones connected on a long throw to tight end Hunter Henry for a 22-yard gain against the Jets, but almost all his other completions came on short passes. In the Patriots’ first three games of the season, Jones had an average of 7.9 air yards per competition – more than three times his Sunday showing.
When he earned the quarterback spot on the All-Rookie team last season, Jones had one game with a average air yards per completion as low as 2.5 – a 25-6 victory against the Jets.
“However it comes, it just goes down to taking what the defense gives, whether that’s the short or the medium or the long,” Jones said. “If your long guy’s open, then you want to give him the ball. If he’s not, then work through your progressions, things like that. But it always goes back to taking what the defense gives.”
Jones sustained an ankle injury on the Patriots’ final offensive snap in a 37-26 loss to the Baltimore Ravens on Sept. 25. The former Alabama All-American missed the next three games, then played the first three series of New England’s 33-14 loss to the Chicago Bears on Oct. 24 before returning to full duty on Sunday.
Matt Patricia, the Patriots’ offensive-line coach and play-caller, said Jones did more than dink-and-dunk in helping New England even its record at 4-4.
“(Quarterbacks) have to extremely situationally aware,” Patricia said. “They’re out there managing the game and the clock and the personnel and the formation and what the defense is trying to do against them and the down-and-distance. All that goes into play, and Mac does a great job of kind of comprehending all of that, trying to put it in a blender and be able to understand all of it in an instant because that play clock is ticking as you’re going, so you may only have about 9 seconds or so to kind of sort that all out.
“And there’s a lot of things that go into that, too. You’re trying to orchestrate not only the play call, the receivers, the skill players, but the offensive line, communicate with the center in a hostile environment in a stadium down in New York against the Jets where you have to identify certain defenders whether it’s the linebackers and who’s in what position, whether it’s a Sam and a Mike and a Will or if it’s a sub-defensive look that maybe presents a like a base look, things like that that you have to try to recognize so that everyone’s on the same page. And he puts a lot of effort and time into studying those looks, understanding kind of the different configurations and then making sure that we communicate that out.
“That was really tough this past weekend. They do a really good job with some of the things that they do and also did within the game that were maybe a little bit different from that aspect of it that we had to kind of decipher as we went through and make some adjustments, and I think he had to kind of adjust to some of that as we did on the sideline. I thought he did a really good job getting out on the field in that nine seconds trying to figure that all out and get it communicated.”
Jones also had to endure the Jets’ pass rush, which sacked him six times – two more than in any other game in his NFL career. It might have been more, but Jones tied his career high with seven rushing attempts.
“I thought Mac did a nice job,” Patriots coach Bill Belichick said. “We had pressure on quite a few pass plays, more than we would like, for sure. I thought he made good decisions and had to pull the ball down a couple of times and make some key runs for us.
“The Jets gave us some looks on the line of scrimmage that he had to deal with in the running game, and I thought he handled those well. I thought he gave us a lot of good plays.”
New England will try to get above .500 for the first time this season when they square off against the Indianapolis Colts at noon CST Sunday at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts.
The Colts have dropped their past two games to fall to 3-4-1 despite giving up 36 points in those contests. Indianapolis has yielded an average of 19.6 points per game in 2022, which ranks seventh in the NFL.
“I think this is, once again, one of the top defenses in the league,” Jones said. “Great front, great backend, great linebackers. They got the players, and, obviously, it’s a little newer scheme compared to last year with (defensive coordinator) Gus Bradley, but they’ve obviously done a really good job this year in tackles for loss, pressures and all that. They’re getting back there to the quarterback, and it’s just a really good defense. We’ve just got to be ready to go.”
FOR MORE OF AL.COM’S COVERAGE OF THE NFL, GO TO OUR NFL PAGE
Mark Inabinett is a sports reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter at @AMarkG1.
