His Year: Mac Jones 2021

Mac Jones is a Jaguar, but just two years ago he was the best rookie QB in the NFL for the New England Patriots. Let's talk about that.

It's April 29, 2021.

Just 26 months ago, on February 3, 2019, the Patriots were in Atlanta winning their sixth Super Bowl of the new millennium, and cementing themselves as the greatest NFL team of all time. Seriously, pick whatever decade from any post-merger team you want to pick. 70s Steelers, 80s 49ers, 90s Cowboys, none of them can stack up to the 2010s New England Patriots, but it is not the 2010s anymore. It has been an extremely bad two years in New England.

Right after winning the Super Bowl, the Patriots set to work building the best defence of the entire play tracking era for the 2019 season (article forthcoming), but they were handicapped in a way that nobody saw coming.

The 2019 Patriots had serious QB issues.

The falloff that everybody had been predicting for years had finally arrived for Tom Brady. For just the second time in his career he posted a negative CPOE in 2019, and his results were the worst since his 2004 breakout. Because of Tom's struggles, the Patriots missed a first round bye for the first time since 2009, and lost their home playoff game to the Tennessee Titans despite holding them to basically zero EPA/Play.

You do not get held to zero EPA/Play on offence and beat the New England Patriots. It just doesn't happen, yet in 2019 it happened twice. The Tom Brady stans like to ignore this, but at the conclusion of the 2019 season it's clear to all that the ride is over. Tom cannot steer this ship anymore.

Let me be clear (it will be even more clear when I write the article on how great that defence was): if the 2019 Patriots had any of the NFLs top ten QBs (Lamar Jackson, Patrick Mahomes, Dak Prescott, Russell Wilson, Kirk Cousins, Deshaun Watson, Drew Brees, Derek Carr, Ryan Tennehill, Jimmy Garoppolo) they are Super Bowl champions again. Since they didn't, they weren't, and that isn't good enough for the Patriots. As such, I respect the franchise for making the move they had to make.

In the offseason, Tom Brady is allowed to go play for Tampa Bay, and his career has a magical two year revival before declining again in 2022. The Tom Brady stans use this as an opportunity to ignore the fact that the 2019 season ever happened. More rational people reason that 2019 was a one year blip on a QB that was still in his prime. I am a bit more cynical (man, I've got to try HGH). Nevertheless, I do not believe this revival would have happened in New England. Therefore, I still believe it was the right move to get off Tom Brady before the impenetrable Patriot legacy was tarnished forever by missing the playoffs, which inevitably would've happened in my opinion.

Instead of Tom Brady, the 2020 Patriots bring in Cam Newton to miss the playoffs with. The offence surrounding Cam is actually much better than the one around Tom the year before, and they try their best, but the all time great defence of 2019 is long gone, replaced with one that ranks just 22nd in 2020. The team drops from 12-4 in 2019 to 7-9 in 2020, their first losing record since 2000. Most teams can accept this, but for the Patriots it's unacceptable, which brings us back to April 29, 2021.

It's the 2021 NFL Draft. Everybody knows that the Patriots are looking for a QB, but almost everybody believes they're going to need to trade up to get their guy. Trevor Lawrence and Zach Wilson are off limits. They're going one and two to the Jaguars and Jets respectively. Third is where the intrigue begins. The San Francisco 49ers have just traded for this pick from Houston, but who do they pick?

Almost all season this would've been an easy question with an easy answer: Mac Jones out of Alabama. However, as is typical with the Draft process, a sexy pick, Trey Lance out of small North Dakota State, has been skyrocketing up Draft boards, despite having just 17 career starts, and missing all of last season. I can assure you (and you'd know without my assurance) that Bill Belichick is not going to select Trey Lance. That’s not a Patriot style draft pick. The same is also true of the other QB who is a lock to be taken in this first round. Can anybody honestly believe that Bill Belichick would select Justin Fields with a first round draft pick?

All of that means that the Patriots are in a bad spot here. It's not hard to reason that they want Mac Jones, but they're picking 15th. It is extremely hard when you want one player in the entire draft and your pick is number 15. It's almost certain your player will get picked, and your only choice will be to just trade back. Patriot fans know this story too well, but looking into the future, the 2022 draft is not going to have any NFL starter calibre QBs in it (asterisk Brock Purdy). Nobody knows it in 2021, but if the Patriots miss their guy here, they are going to be waiting years to get the young QB in the door that they want.

You can imagine the elation when at number three, the San Francisco 49ers select Trey Lance, and kicks the remaining QBs into a tailspin. Of the whole rest of the top ten, nobody is selecting a QB. That leaves us at the 11th overall pick. It belongs to the Chicago Bears, and they have one question to answer: Justin Fields, or Mac Jones? In reality, this is more of a philosophical question. Would you like the immense physical talents of Justin Fields or the 'maniacal obsession' (as described by one of his coaches) with football that Mac Jones brings?

When Roger Goodell walks up to the podium, we get our answer.

The Bears select Justin Fields, and as he stands up looking like he just got drafted to Vietnam instead of Chicago, it slowly dawns on everybody. The Cowboys are not going to draft a quarterback. The Chargers are certainly not drafting a quarterback. The Jets have already drafted their quarterback.

By the luck of fools and Patriots, the impossible has happened. An outcome thought impossible at the beginning of the Draft process, and even the beginning of Draft night itself. With the 15th pick the Patriots get their guy. They select Mac Jones out of Alabama to be their new QB.

I cannot believe they've gotten so lucky. Things like this only happen to the Patriots. Instead of trading back in the Draft and going into 2021 with a very glum outlook for the second season in a row, excitement abounds for the new Mac Jones era.

On draft night, there are no delusions that Mac Jones is going to start week one. Not on this team. Bill Belichick unequivocally states that Cam Newton is the starting QB going forward. Mac Jones does not change that plan, and he's perhaps the only coach I would believe when he says that, but even the old tough nut Belichick does not take long to crack once Mac gets into his building.

That 'maniacal obsession' with the game of football impresses the Patriots just as much as it did his coaches at Alabama, and it does not take long from Bill to go from an interview on April 29 stating without trepidation that there will be no QB competition to an interview on July 27 stating that the competition is a 'clean slate.' When asked for clarification as to whether that applies to the QB battle, he gives a typical Belichick answer: 'all the coaches and all the players.'

In just three months of being an NFL QB, Mac Jones is a lot of the way to changing Bill's mind about having a rookie start for his team. This is all the opening he needs, as with a very impressive performance in the NFL preseason, combined with a bit of extra help from Cam Newton refusing to get the Covid vaccine, it's announced that the week one starter is Mac Jones.

Knowing better than anybody that you can't un-ring the first round QB bell, Bill Belichick decides it's best to just cut Cam Newton, ending his career as an NFL starter.

From here on in, it's Mac Jones or nothing.

This immediately looks like a great choice, as in week one Mac plays great against a Miami defence that deserves to be respected (8th in 2021). He generates 0.28 EPA/Play, and thoroughly outplays Tua Tagovailoa. Mac has the Patriots in position deep in Miami territory on a game winning drive at the 3:35 mark, but a Damien Harris fumble ends the game in a 17-16 loss for the Patriots.

0-1, but what a start to a career for Mac Jones. Losing at home to the 2021 Miami Dolphins is not fun, but this is perhaps the most uplifting loss the Patriots have ever suffered, and without two fumbles in Miami territory (neither of which were Mac's fault) it's certain that the Patriots would have won this game. Looking around the league at the number one (Trevor Lawrence) and two (Zach Wilson) overall picks sees them both struggling mightily in week one, which makes this performance look even better.

Weeks two and three however make Mac look like the rookie he is, as they go much less well. Mac generates negative EPA/Play in week two against the Jets and week three against the Saints, beginning a trend of rookie inconsistency for Mac that we will see throughout this season. Thankfully, the Jets are the Jets, so despite Mac struggling a lot the Patriots still walk away with an easy 19 point win. No such luck against the Saints, as New England takes a brutal 28-13 loss as home favourites.

There is so shame in struggling against the New Orleans Saints defence. It's the same defence that's still one of the best in the league to this day. Much better QBs than Mac Jones in his third career start have done much worse against it. It's a bit less acceptable to struggle so hard against the New York Jets and their absolutely horrendous defence, but in a blowout win, things like that can be overlooked.

In week four, none of this will be the case. Under no circumstance will it be okay to struggle. Nothing will be overlooked. Week four is set to be the biggest game of Mac's young career so far. It's Tom Brady's homecoming, as the Tampa Bay Buccaneers are coming to New England for the first time since Tom left.

The 2021 Tampa Bay Buccaneers are a juggernaut. In virtually every way, they're better than the 2020 version that has just won the Super Bowl. They are coming off a loss last week, but at the hands of the eventual Super Bowl champion Los Angeles Rams, most are willing to let that one slide. Hence, they come into this game against our lowly 1-2 New England Patriots as hefty six point road favourites, meaning that had this game been played in Tampa, this would be a two possession spread.

There's no way a game between two teams who are not division rivals, not in the same conference, nowhere near each other in the standings, and have virtually no chance of meeting each other again in the playoffs, should count for so much. Nevertheless, due to all the surrounding circumstances, this game is a big deal. The second Tom left, people have been asking who's the most responsible for the Patriots' success, Belichick or Brady?

Considering Tom immediately won yet another Super Bowl, and the Patriots crashed and burned and fell out of the playoffs, some people already think they know the answer, but neither party has had the chance to prove it directly against the other.

Not until tonight.

It's Sunday Night Football. The whole world is watching. What better way for Bill to prove himself than to upset the juggernaut Buccaneers and their all time great QB with a man in his fourth career start?

Which brings us back to Mac Jones. All that I've said above is great, and it would be absolutely amazing if he could pull this off, but this is a tall mountain to climb for a regular NFL QB. For a QB in his fourth career start, especially one who just a couple weeks ago struggled against the hapless New York Jets, it's simply unreasonable.

This is the NFL. Nobody cares what's reasonable. It's not fair, but this is primetime. Either Mac rises to the occasion, or he doesn't.

On the first few drives, it certainly looks like we're getting the ‘doesn't’ part of that equation. In the first ten minutes, the Patriots can manage only a single first down, meanwhile Tom Brady is on the field setting the all time NFL passing yards record (ironic that it happens in this game). Thankfully, the Patriot defence has come to play, so the score remains just 3-0. Though the next Patriot series ends in a Mac Jones interception, a missed field goal means they don't get burned by that either.

To begin the second quarter, the Patriots are able to overcome two offensive holding penalties en route to a touchdown making the score 7-3, but fall straight back into the malaise, managing just one more first down before half. However, given the outstanding play of the New England defence, this brief bit of offence is enough to take us into half with a 7-6 lead.

There may be a new QB in charge, but that was a very Patriot first half. It was not a pretty half for the New England offence, with the entire half featuring just six first downs, yet somehow someway they found a burst big enough to get them into the lead. This is of course better than being behind, but it leaves poor Mac Jones in the terribly uncomfortable position of having to win a second half battle with Tom Brady.

The Bucs cannot go anywhere in their opening possession, but (as is becoming a theme already) a fumble deep in Tampa Bay territory on a completed pass lets them off the hook. The Bucs also go three and out from here. The Patriots go three and out in response.

We are now halfway through the third quarter with a lead, which should be a good outcome given the Patriots are big home underdogs, but this is beginning to become really uncomfortable. In fact, according to NFLFastR's estimated Win Probability (WP) model, the Patriots are actually getting less and less likely to win as each opportunity to put more distance between themselves and Tom Brady is wasted. With that man on the other sideline, there are only so many chances.

At last, at the mid point of the third quarter, the dam finally bursts. The Patriot defence has played their heart out all night, but they cannot provide any significant resistance on this drive as the Buccaneers march straight down the field and score easily to take a 13-7 lead.

There's something I've neglected to tell you because I'm going to say it now. As all I've been talking about has been happening, there has been something else happening that's determining the fate of this game.

The Patriots are having perhaps the worst rushing game in NFL history.

New England is well on their way to setting records with their ineptitude on the ground tonight. They're going to finish without a single successful rush play. Zero. At no time do any of their rushes make them more likely to score than they were beforehand. That is a legendary level of ineptitude, rarely ever seen in the history of the NFL. Thankfully, Bill Belichick is a good coach, and gave up on the rush game almost immediately (the team finishes with eight total carries), but this has left Mac Jones, who we mustn't forget is in his fourth career NFL start, in the position of having a top five pass defence in the NFL knowing he's going to pass on every single snap.

No wonder the offence has been struggling.

As Mac takes the field at 3:21 of the third to try to respond to the Bucs' touchdown, none of this is going to change. This drive will feature no handoffs. It's almost entirely conducted in the shotgun. No trickery. Nothing. Despite all the struggles so far tonight, the Patriots have confidence that their QB can beat the vicious defence of the Buccaneers. I'll reiterate again that this is not fair. A man in his fourth career start should not be put in this position, but here he is.

Welcome to Mac Jones' Year.

After struggling so badly all night, Mac comes out on the most important drive of his young career so far and throws seven consecutive completions to get the Patriots into the end zone and straight back into the lead again, the scoreboard now reading 14-13 Patriots. The commentators cannot contain themselves, and Cris Collinsworth beats me to the punch by asking the exact same question I was about to ask:

"We've talked about what this would mean to Tom Brady and Bill Belichick, but what does a win tonight mean for Mac Jones?"

Just look at the graphic NBC used to promote this game. Mac Jones is not on it. Nobody expected the battle that we are getting.

Neither Cris nor I can quantify or even confidently speculate what this win would mean for young Mac Jones. For a man in his fourth start, he's already come further than most NFL veterans have ever been able to come against Tom Brady. Tom is not a fan of this speculation at all, so he drives the Bucs down the field to take a 16-14 lead with a field goal. Just how does Mac respond to this?

You better believe he responds to it.

The Patriots head straight down the field again and take the lead back 17-16. When Tom predictably responds to take the score to 19-17 at 2:02 of the fourth, this leaves it all on Mac's shoulders. It's all right there for him. He can become an instant legend in New England if he can just get the team three more points.

It takes just two plays to get the Patriots all the way into Tampa territory, but from here things slow. A false start wipes out an easy second down conversion, but Mac converts it from further back anyway. From here everything grinds to a halt. The Patriots can get to the 37 but no further, which forces Nick Folk to try a 56 yard field goal through the wind and the rain.

Unfortunately, we never do get to figure out what this win would've meant for Mac Jones, as the coronation is ruined when the kick hits the left goalpost, the clock runs out, and the Buccaneers win, but please don't allow that to colour your opinion of what Mac Jones did on this night.

In his fourth career start, after struggling mightily in two of the first three, Mac Jones came out and outplayed Tom Brady, and gave the NFL's best team all that they wanted and more. Yes, there were the struggles for the game's first 40 minutes, but he got it figured out, and on the whole generated 0.13 EPA/Play against the sixth ranked defence in the NFL. Let's not forget he did all this without a single successful rush to back him up.

I've heard lots of people endlessly bring up a certain game later in the season which I'll get to, but far too infrequently is this game, where Mac got so close to beating a team that's better than Buffalo without a single successful rushing attempt to back him up, ever spoken of. It deserves some credit, far more than it actually gets or is ever going to get. Not everybody can do this. Normal people can't do this. If you'd like to see how a normal rookie performs in this situation, go watch week seven where Justin Fields (picked before Mac) and his Bears get decimated 38-3 at the hands of these same Buccaneers. By all means, that is what should have happened today, but it isn't, and Mac Jones deserves all the credit in the world for that.

At last moving past all that excitement, we can take stock of the fact that the Patriots are now 1-3, and a spot even in the newly expanded AFC playoffs is slipping away quickly. The Buffalo Bills are looking extremely intimidating, having outscored their opponents 134-44 in their first four weeks, and are about to beat the Kansas City Chiefs 38-20 in week five. It's looking as if nothing can stop them, and the AFC East might just be out of reach already. Nevertheless, making up two games on a divisional opponent is always possible. It's now imperative that the Patriots win every game they can to stay within two of Buffalo.

The first step towards that goal, on the road in Houston, does not look all that intimidating. However, the defence that gave Tom Brady such fits just one week ago does not have anything for Davis Mills. The Texans score on every touch they get in the first half, but go into the half with only a 15-9 lead due to Ka'imi Fairbairn missing extra points after both touchdowns.

After another touchdown coming out of half leaves the Patriots down 22-9, New England can feel their season slipping away, and Mac turns it on, first narrowing the gap to ten points, then to seven points, then to a tied football game at 9:36 of the fourth quarter, and after a Houston three and out, the Patriots take every bit of the 7:15 remaining on the game clock to kick a game winning field goal with 17 seconds left to squeak out of Houston with a 25-22 win.

It's never fun (in this era) to go to Houston and win by just three points, but none of this is on Mac Jones. The vaunted Patriot defence allowed Davis Mills to generate 0.54 EPA/Play on them, which is a performance which alone provides enough momentum to keep him in the starting spot down there all season. Give all the credit to Mac Jones for also responding with the best game of his young career, generating 0.37 EPA/Play in his own right, and engineering a perfect game winning drive to move the Patriots to 2-3 and keep some pace in the AFC playoff race.

This is once again great for Mac, but once again his feet are going to be held to the fire, as in week six he must play a top ten defence for the fourth time in his six career starts, as the Patriots welcome the Dallas Cowboys into Foxborough.

These Cowboys are no joke. They walk into New England with the NFL's third best defence, combined with a pretty dang good offence. All this combined means that the Patriots are once again home underdogs. Once again, they're going to have to show the world that they’ve made a mistake taking New England lightly.

The game opens with Dallas failing a fourth and one conversion on their own 34, which the Patriot ground game converts into a touchdown without much help from Mac. The Cowboys easily score in response to make the score 7-7, but Mac marches straight down the field on the crack back, making the score 14-7 without even seeing a second down.

Dallas marches straight down the field to attempt to tie the score again, but sees their possession end on an interception in the end zone. The Patriots walk down the field and score a touchdown to make the score 21-7, but this touchdown is nullified by an offensive hold, and on the very next play the Cowboys strip the ball from Mac and the Patriots get no points. The score remains 14-7, but Dallas gets a field goal to narrow the score to 14-10.

New England's next series finally sees a defence get a stop the conventional way, but since nothing about this contest is allowed to be normal the punt is blocked and the Cowboys get the ball deep in Patriot territory. The find themselves first and goal at the one yard line. An Ezekiel Elliott handoff is no good. Second and goal. Another also doesn't work. Third and goal. A QB sneak can't get through either. Fourth and goal is another QB sneak try for Dak Prescott, and after video review it's confirmed that the Cowboys have again scored no points, and we go into the half leading 14-10.

This is unbelievable.

My words may not have adequately been able to convey how nuts this first half is, but it saw the Cowboys inside the red zone coming away with no points twice. It saw them have a touchdown overturned by replay review, and the Patriots also scored a touchdown that did not count. That is to say that despite the 14-10 halftime score, neither defence is having any luck at all, despite both sides having top five units.

This changes some in the second half, as both teams open with three and outs. From here however, Dallas at last scores a touchdown to make the score 17-14, and then a field goal to pull ahead 20-14 at the beginning of the fourth quarter. This is where Mac once again shifts into high gear, converting two critical third downs as New England takes back the lead again, 21-20, at 6:27 of the fourth.

At this point the Cowboys decide they want to win right now, taking a long methodical possession that runs the clock all the way down to 2:47. Luckily for Mac, it ends in a missed field goal, so we're in position to be able to get out of this game with a 21-20 victory with a couple first downs. New England's estimated WP is all the way up to 67%, the highest it's been all night.

This is where calamity strikes.

After a first down rush, Dallas obviously takes their first timeout, and the Patriots (the team known for never doing this kind of thing) somehow manage to take a delay of game penalty coming out of a timeout, making this second and 15 an obvious passing situation. Already in his young career, Mac has been put in plenty of must-pass positions, and he's generally done okay, but this time, it’s not going to be like that.

This time, the worst possible outcome happens.

Mac drops back to pass, sees Kendrick Bourne open on a fairly simple slant pattern, and just throws it over his head. This becomes one of the interceptions in the infamous Trevon Diggs reign of terror, and with nobody ahead of him (and after a failed two point conversion try) it becomes six points for the Dallas Cowboys.

Ouch.

The Patriots' probability of winning this game has dropped from 60% (up one with the ball inside three minutes) to 19% (down five with the ball inside three minutes) on just one play, one of the most impactful offensive plays of the entire 2021 NFL season. Not impactful in a good way either.

Mac has to feel the weight of this. There's no way he doesn't, especially because of all the character traits of his that I've taken such care to emphasize. The 'maniacal obsession' with being great, the slamming the ground after minor mistakes in practice, all of these things (that I've so far spun as being positives) have the potential to throw everything off the rails in the wake of a mistake like this. Just last week, he was able to get the game winning drive done in Houston, but this is not Houston. This is the Dallas Cowboys.

There's 2:21 left. Mac must complete this drive, and the commentators (among some fans I'm sure) are too busy musing about the interception that's just happened to even notice when Mac throws a perfect ball straight back at Trevon Diggs (over his head actually), and Kendrick Bourne takes it all the way to the house. Following the successful two point conversion, the score is 29-26 Patriots.

Talk about making up for your mistake.

Most young QBs would not have the moxie to walk straight back onto the field and go straight back to the matchup that resulted in one of the worst plays of the entire 2021 season just a few minutes ago, but Mac did, and because of that we've just seen another of the most important plays of the entire 2021 NFL season. The Patriots' WP has gone straight back up to 62%, in one of the wildest sequences of events I've ever seen in an NFL football game.

Regrettably, the Cowboys are able to kick a game tying field goal as time expires, the Patriots are not able to score on the opening drive of overtime, and that's the only chance they get as Dallas easily scores and takes a 35-29 win to drop the Patriots to 2-4, but holy cow.

What a game.

Back when I was still doing my excitement rankings (before I got tired of everybody yelling at me for it), I ranked this as the third most exciting game of the 2021 NFL season, and in a normal season (meaning one that didn't include the Chiefs-Bills epic in the AFC playoffs), it would've been higher than that.

While yes, this is a loss, and one that does not look like a great Mac Jones performance on the stat sheet, he was able to hold his Patriots in a game they had no business even being in, against an opposing offence that his defence could not stop, featuring perhaps the best instance of a player immediately making up for his mistake in NFL history (an unresearched claim). The 2021 Cowboys are good. They're really good. It's the same Cowboy core that's still tearing up the league to this day, and Mac had what it took to take them to the bitter end, in his sixth career NFL start.

This game went even further towards elevating the reputation of Mac Jones and his Patriots. While reputation is not worth anything once the time to decide who gets to keep playing in January comes around, you know when it's worth a lot? Week seven of the regular season, where Mac has the first truly great game of his NFL career, a 54-13 drubbing of the New York Jets.

I wonder if at any point while losing by a combined 60 points to the Patriots this season, the Jets ever wondered why they didn't pick Mac themselves?

I get it. The Jets are the Jets. Beating them (even by 41 points) is not terribly impressive, but what is impressive is week eight, where in an important game for future playoff positioning (the Chargers come into this game 4-2), Mac goes into Los Angeles as a four point road underdog, outplays Justin Herbert, and walks out with a 27-24 win, which is really more like a 27-17 win, due to a meaningless Charger touchdown with 47 seconds to go.

That is a statement to the AFC Wild Card race. The Patriots are coming. Now at 4-4, they've actually managed to also make up some ground on Buffalo, who (having had their bye already) sit at just 5-2. 1.5 games is still not particularly close, but this week, when the Bills inexplicably lose to the woeful Jacksonville Jaguars, becoming one of just three wins (and one of just seven games that are not double digit losses) for that team on the season, the AFC East all of a sudden starts to look very attainable.

The Patriots don't have an easy time either, with Mac again showing some rookie inconsistency and struggling quite badly against the 7th ranked defence of the Carolina Panthers. Thankfully, at the same time, Sam Darnold has one of the worst games in NFL history on the other side, so the Patriots still walk out of Charlotte with an easy 24-6 win, but things like this make you wonder what this team could be if the offence and the defence could ever both play great at the same time.

What they are right now is 5-4, breathing down the necks of the 5-3 Buffalo Bills, but still in the somewhat awkward position of having to battle for two playoff spots at once. Making up ground on Buffalo is great, but if that pursuit is futile, it's also imperative to make up ground in the wild card race. Week ten provides a great opportunity for that, as the 5-4 Cleveland Browns are on their way to Foxborough for a game that will prove to be pivotal in the pursuit of one of the AFC's final playoff spots, should it come to that.

These Cleveland Browns are coming off defeating the Cincinnati Bengals (who will go on to be the AFC's Super Bowl representative) 41-16, in what is by far their best performance of the season. The Patriots (offensively) are coming off their worst, so there's real reason to be scared of the Browns. This is not quite Tampa Bay or Dallas in terms of difficulty, but it's not Los Angeles or Carolina either. The Patriots come in as mild favourites, but at only a field goal's advantage, this game is more of a pick 'em than anything.

This shows on each side's first drive of the game. Cleveland is able to score a touchdown, and aside from needing to convert a fourth down on the goal line they do it quite easily. By comparison, New England looks like they're walking in quicksand, but with clutch Mac Jones conversions on third and eight, third and six, and a big third and 13 in the red zone, they are able to match the Browns to take the score to 7-7.

The ensuing Cleveland series is an interception on their own five and it takes one Rhamondre Stevenson rush to take the score to 14-7. The Browns don't repeat this, but they do punt their next possession away. After this splendid punt, the Patriots must start their offensive possession on their own two yard line.

No problem.

After a few rushes to get off their own goal line, Mac completes a 12 yard pass on third and five, a 26 yard pass on third and nine, and a 23 yard pass to Kendrick Bourne in the end zone to take a 21-7 lead. One more drive that sees no points, and more Patriot points in response, mean that this game is over. New England's estimated WP reaches 95 percent by the half and gets to 100% before the start of the fourth quarter. The Patriots have just taken an important game in the AFC playoff picture, and blown it out of the water 45-7, and Mac Jones has just had an all time great NFL game.

You may be thinking that I ought to pump the brakes calling this game all time great, but I ask that you reconsider. Mac has just generated 0.6 EPA/Play in an NFL game. That's something most NFL QBs will never do, and that some people shockingly high on the totem pole will never accomplish. Mac has just done it in his 10th NFL start, in a game that was not at all meaningless.

People will point to the entire Cleveland Brown franchise falling apart in the wake of this game, and use that as an excuse to discard it, but that happened after this, not beforehand. The Cleveland Browns that Mac faced had just (literally one week ago) humiliated Joe Burrow, and forced him into one of the worst games of his entire NFL career to date (the 2024 offseason). Once that exact same defence got up against Mac Jones, they couldn't hold his jockstrap. It was no contest. It was easy, and that's because Mac Jones is great.

If you still don't believe me, let's look at the numbers from Mac's first ten NFL starts. In the first ten weeks of the 2021 NFL season, Mac has generated 0.121 EPA/Play (15th) on a 3.8 CPOE (9th), all of this as a true rookie.

15th and 9th may not seem great, but it is exceedingly difficult to succeed in the NFL as a true rookie. That's why even the ones that turned out to be all time greats, like Brady, Rodgers, and Mahomes, were not even given the chance to try to play as true rookies. If they would've been, they would've struggled mightily, because almost all rookies do.

Normal people don't do this, yet Mac Jones is doing it.

Something else normal people don't do is complete the comeback and take the lead of the AFC East, which is what all of the Patriots do with a 25-0 drubbing of the Atlanta Falcons (despite another bout of rookie inconsistency from Mac, who again generates negative EPA/Play this game), in conjunction with another Bills loss to drop them to 6-4. With our Patriots now sitting at 7-4, the worries about making the playoffs are gone, but there are still ambitions to be sought for these New England Patriots, ambitions greater than we could've ever imagined mere weeks ago.

2021 is one of the weakest AFCs there's ever been. This is evidenced by the fact that as of the end of week 11, every team in the conference has four losses already, barring one exception that I will get to.

There are five real players for the conference's only first round bye. The first players are the upstart 6-4 Cincinnati Bengals, the leaders of the AFC North and outside contenders for the number one seed. The most obvious are the 7-4 Kansas City Chiefs, having represented the AFC in each of the last two Super Bowls, but they've fallen off pretty badly this year. Sporting blowout losses to two other members of this list, nobody is taking them particularly seriously. One of the teams conducting those blowouts of the Chiefs were the Buffalo Bills, who beat them 38-20, but have fallen to 6-4 with some baffling losses in the weeks since.

Those baffling losses have dropped them all the way behind our 7-4 New England Patriots, who have come from nowhere to have the inside track to the AFC's number one seed, but in order to get there, they're going to have to beat the AFC's best team.

The Tennessee Titans are nobody's idea of a terribly intimidating opponent, but in 2021, they're the best the AFC has to offer. They're 8-3 so far, and have wins over both Buffalo and Kansas City. Make no mistake. If there is a team to beat in the AFC this year, it's not the Bills. It's not the Chiefs. It is the Tennessee Titans.

The Patriots have put a nice little win streak together, winning five in a row over the Jets, Chargers, Panthers, Browns, and Falcons, but now in week 12 they have to play the Titans. This is where we figure out whether the 2021 New England Patriots in general or Mac Jones in specific are for real, or if they will be banished to the depths of wild card mediocrity and told to come back without a rookie QB next year. This game is not remembered very well in the history books, and while I know why that is, and I'm about to tell you why, it's still strange that a game this big and important has been lost to time already.

The reason why nobody remembers this game is because it's no contest. The Patriots score on all drives but one and pull away to an easy 36-13 win, taking the AFC's number one spot in the process, but the reason it's weird to me that nobody remembers is that this is a coronation for Mac Jones. It's proof that he can do it at the very top level. This is what everybody claims to be looking for out of their QB. Can he do it when it matters most? We've just seen that Mac Jones can, yet nobody remembers it anyway. This just feels unfair to me.

Everybody in the world remembers Michael Vick's coming out party in 2002, and that was a meaningless week 13 game against a bad Minnesota team. Mac Jones has just generated 0.38 EPA/Play in a matchup between the AFC's two best teams and beaten the top non-Patriot team in the conference by 23 points, and other than myself just telling you, have you heard about it since it happened?

This game deserves to be remembered, but it's not. We all know why it's not, and it's perhaps an interesting take on society that everybody on earth seems to remember what comes next, yet nobody remembers the elite performance that came just one week before.

We've reached the main event.

The game everybody came to read about. It's week 13. It's Monday Night Football, and we're in Buffalo for the game we've all been waiting for. It's finally the 8-4 Patriots against the 7-4 Buffalo Bills in a head to head matchup for the lead of the AFC East.

The problem is that this game is played on a horrendous December night.

The rain and the wind are both extremely strong. In the first half it's so bad that so much as completing a shotgun snap is an adventure. This is evidenced on the first series, where the Patriots try a pitch. Just a simple pitch from QB to RB cannot be done properly. The punt that ends the possession is virtually rolled along the ground it's kicked so low.

These are not the Jets. This is not a comedy of errors. This is evidence that normal football cannot be played in these conditions. It's often forgotten when people talk about Mac’s performance here that it takes most of the first quarter for Josh Allen to complete a pass also. Wind gusts of up to 50 mph are almost entirely not workable.

I'm going to tell you what you already know.

In the end, Mac Jones ends up with six touches. Three QB sneaks, two complete passes, and one incomplete pass, and the Patriots win this game 14-10 based on the strength of their rush game. Josh Allen ended up with 39, so it's not entirely impossible to use your QB as part of your offence on a night like this, but he also had one of his worst games of the season, so perhaps he should've been used less.

Everybody knows all of this already, but what everybody forgets is that in the aftermath of the game all of the talk was about how chill and happy Mac looked in the post game press conference. If you know anything about QB press conferences, even after a win, two of the least common emotions to see are chill and happy. Feeling this way in the wake of this game was seen as a very good sign at the time, of a young QB not being self-centred and being willing to do whatever it took for his team to win, even if that means touching the ball six times in the entire game.

In the years since, this line of thinking has been entirely erased in favour of half-baked narratives that this game destroyed Mac's confidence for good, or this game created a rift between Mac and the coaches that never healed, and several other variations on the same theme. Those subscribing to any of these narratives use as evidence each of the next two games, where Mac struggles against the Colts as the Patriots fall out of the one seed, and struggles in the rematch with the Bills as they fall out of the division lead too.

Mac did indeed play quite badly in both of these games. Don't get me wrong, but it's not like inconsistency wasn't something we'd seen before from Mac. He has games where he plays badly, and it doesn't necessarily correlate with the quality of defence he's playing. This is not indicative of anything. It happens. It's an inherent feature of having a rookie QB as your starter. Those who treat the first Buffalo game as if it's the beginning of the disease that would eventually kill the Jones Patriots relationship are reaching in my opinion.

I take as evidence that week 17 against the Jacksonville Jaguars is likely (either this or Cleveland) the best game of Mac's NFL career, seeing him generate 0.58 EPA/Play and obliterating his 2021 Draft-mate Trevor Lawrence by the score of 50-10. Even after that first Buffalo game, he was still capable of doing this. If you're capable of doing this as a true rookie, there's sure as hell no unfixable issue with your confidence in yourself or your coaching staff. I simply refuse to accept that argument.

So goes the 2021 NFL season for Mac Jones after a loss in a meaningless week 18 game in Miami. The Patriots have fallen all the way into being the second wild card team with a 10-7 record, which only seems like a disappointment because I've told you the heights to which they've soared. If I were to go back to Draft night, and tell a Patriot fan as they were drafting Mac Jones 15th overall that they were going to win ten games and make the playoffs, they would’ve been elated, but considering the way this season has gone, it feels like a letdown.

The playoff game sees Mac going back to the scene of the crime in Buffalo for the third game of the year between these two teams, and he is able to exorcise some of the demons from earlier this year, completing 24 of 35 true passes and generating 0.17 EPA/Play. This is enough to win a normal playoff game. Unfortunately, this is not a normal playoff game. As will be the story forever with the 2021 Patriots, the offence and defence cannot play well at the same time. Just look at the series success numbers.

100 percent means that every single first down the Bills got converted itself into another one (or a touchdown). No turnovers, no punts, no nothing. This is the infamous 'perfect game' for the Buffalo Bills in which they scored a touchdown at every time of asking, the only time in playoff history this has happened, and it came at the perfect time to bury what was a pretty good playoff performance out of Mac Jones.

Let me be clear: Patrick Mahomes would've lost this game. Aaron Rodgers would've lost this game, so would Tom Brady. Anybody you can name, they wouldn't have been able to stand up to 100% either. Mac Jones is the unlucky soul that happened to be put in this position, but we all should be able to understand that he's a blameless bystander in all this.

For one last time, the offence came to play, but the defence just couldn't hold up their end. This sucks, and to get buried 47-17 is nobody's ideal way to end a season, but everybody thought Mac would have plenty more chances to get a playoff win. Nobody was thinking that this would be the last time we saw Mac on this stage. Let me tell you why.

In 2021, as a true rookie, Mac Jones finished the season generating 0.123 EPA/Play (15th), and 6.22 ANY/A (18th), on a 2.4 CPOE (8th).

Eighth.

Do you know how long it's been since a rookie has been able to rank top ten in the NFL in accuracy? Think of any great true rookie you want. I'll go over them all. CJ Stroud in 2023 got great results due to being surrounded by that hugely talented Houston offence, but in accuracy ranked just 21st. 2020 sees Justin Herbert getting great results for the same reason, but having a CPOE of zero, meaning his accuracy was perfectly average and that's all. Joe Burrow did finish his rookie year with positive 2.1, but that can't match what Mac did either.

Kyler Murray 2019? No. Baker Mayfield 2018? No. Andrew Luck 2012? No. Cam Newton 2011? No. Matt Ryan 2008? No. There are three true rookie seasons that can match that of Mac Jones in 2021 in the CPOE era (which starts in 2006) in terms of accuracy, and only three. The greatest true rookie season of all time (Dak Prescott 2016) obviously shows up here, and is joined by both Robert Griffin III and Russell Wilson in 2012, and that is it.

In terms of rookie seasons, Dak Prescott, RG3, and Russell Wilson being your company means you are in ultra rarified air. If not for Robert's knees taking everything away from him, these would be three borderline Hall of Fame players serving as his company. As it stands it's just two, but this is nonetheless amazing company to be in, so where did it all go wrong for Mac?

I don't know. I really don't. I know why he was so much worse as his career went on. He immediately got worse at the two things that normally hold up the longest: accuracy and mistake proneness. Mac Jones was not great at preventing mistakes in his rookie season (no rookie is), but as his career went on he got dramatically worse at it, which is something that just doesn't happen. The same is true of accuracy. In this case Mac did come into the league great at it, but somehow got so much worse that he ended his starting career in 2023 as a terribly inaccurate -2.9 CPOE guy.

As Mac's career went on, his throws got easier, yet he was completing less and less of them. This is normally a telltale sign that a QB is aging out of the league (throw depth goes down, completion percentage goes down), but that makes no sense. Mac Jones was born in 1998. As of today, he's just 25 years old, but he's following the aging curve as if he's 38.

There is one other reason for this to happen, chronic injury, which due to lack of any evidence for any other theory, I suspect must be the case here. There have been no injuries reported, but look at Baker Mayfield as an example. He was doing the exact same thing, aging out of the league as if he was ten years older, all as a result of a horrendous shoulder injury. Once he got through it, he had the best season of his career with Tampa Bay.

Baker was lucky he was a number one overall pick, or he might have ended up like Mac Jones. As of the 2024 offseason, Mac is set to backup for Trevor Lawrence in Jacksonville, with no prospect of a starting job anywhere any time soon. For a QB with one of the best rookie seasons in recent memory, this must be beyond disappointing, but I hope that it will be a blessing. Perhaps with this chance Mac can get over whatever is bothering him, get back to the form he showed in 2021, and get back to looking for a starting job.

I'm going out on a limb writing a His Year article about a currently active player, making a bet that he'll never reach this level of performance again. I'm not entirely sure he won't get back to this level, and if he ever does I'll remember.

I'll remember what Mac can do, and I'll remember the time a rookie brought the Patriots to the top of the world again, even if only for a few weeks.

I'll remember Mac Jones' Year.