Mac Jones Complained to the Jets About How He Was Being Treated and Belichick Stopped Talking to Him. A Weird Situation Just Keeps Getting Weirder.

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Say what you will about living under the rule of a controlling, imperious, authoritarian tyrant. Sure, life in an autocratic regime can be oppressive. But give them their due: despots can get stuff done. And if nothing else, they keep everyone on the same page. Stalin. Kim Jong Un. Justin Trudeau. They're no barrel of laughs, but with them all dissent gets crushed and you get one clear, concise message: That everything is going super swell and you just need to keep following your leader blindly. It's the opposite of freedom; but life stays simple that way. 

And so it was under the reign of the great dictator Bill Belichick. Sure, no one got to say what they really believed. There was one message, and he controlled it.  With rare exceptions, his iron rule prevented the chaos that you see in other organizations. Like anonymous sources constantly throwing shade at one another and competing factions within the team fighting for control. And it worked. It kept the message focused and it was successful.

Now he's gone. And like that other despotic ruler who got dethroned Louis XV put it, Après moi, le déluge. "After me, the flood." After Belichick, the flood of people inside of Gillette running to reporters with their own agendas. Specifically, to tear into Mac Jones:

And the flood waters keep rising. This is a long and thoroughly researched piece, and I'll try to keep it as concise as possible. But I suggest you check out the whole article. And as you read even this much, make note of the absolute chaos going on inside Gillette this past year and going forward:

Source - The frustration was at a boiling point for Mac Jones.

Heading into the final game of the 2023 NFL season, the Patriots quarterback was on an island. According to team sources, the communication between Belichick and Jones was nonexistent by this point. …

Not only was Jones demoted to third string, but nobody told him. He found out he was inactive when the Patriots released the list 90 minutes before kickoff, according to a team source.

Leading up to this game, the quarterback reps were split differently in practice, but no one on the coaching staff told Jones why and no one told him he’d be the team’s emergency third quarterback.

On the other sideline Zach Wilson, who was drafted the same year as Jones, also lost his starting job. But the Jets had been upfront with their struggling quarterback. The Athletic reported that the Jets told Wilson they were going to trade him in the offseason. According to a source who was on the field pregame, the Patriots quarterback was so bothered by his team’s lack of communication, he told a member of the Jets’ staff that he appreciated how their organization handled Wilson’s situation.

Jones privately lamented to locker room confidants that no one talks to him. …

“It’s a broken relationship,” described one Patriots source.

It then goes into the history we're all familiar with. Matt Patricia getting named offensive coordinator. Jones' frustration with the system. Belichick's frustration with Jones, etc. 

When the Patriots offense unraveled this fall, staff members were critical of Jones. Two team sources noted that the quarterback didn’t do enough to call out teammates when things went wrong. The quarterback was described as “happy-go-lucky,” but lacked when it came to leading the group.

“He was part of the problem as far as what he was doing, who he was character-wise. He’s not a bad character guy, but as a guy that wasn’t quite the leader of the group,” one source told MassLive. “He just wanted to be one of the guys.”

After Week 12, when Jones was benched, Belichick eventually stopped speaking to his quarterback. That lack of communication came to a head in the Patriots’ final game.

It created an uncomfortable situation. Jones openly rooted for Zappe trying to show coaches he was handling his demotion maturely. However, behind closed doors, observers noted Jones had little support. It seemed like he was being shut out. 

Allow me to support Jones somewhat with a clip of a frustrated Troy Aikman in Dallas blowing his stack because he was the one responsible for screaming at his offensive line all the time instead of the coaches doing their jobs:

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By that point Aikman had three rings and was a mortal lock first ballot Hall of Famer. Jones is a 25 year old with one playoff game on his resume. You can criticize for trying to be too much of a people person's paper people. Just consider what he was dealing with in his second and third seasons:

One team source said that early film sessions with [Bill] O’Brien painted a picture of widespread issues. The offensive line wasn’t adequately pass-protecting. The receivers had issues with route running and catching. …

The Patriots allowed 28 sacks during Jones’ rookie year. That number rose to 41 in 2022 and tied a Belichick-era high with 48 sacks allowed this past season. The 89 combined sacks are the most allowed in back-to-back years in New England since the 2000 and 2001 seasons.

There's a lot more in here that drills down into what we all saw in real time. Jones mechanics breaking down like a Smartcar as his frustration level rose and he tried to do too much. And his decision-making being even worse, leading to turnovers, sacks, and 3 & outs. So the offense became a perpetual motion machine of suck, feeding on its own ineptitude. 

I certainly get how the response to a young quarterback spiraling like that is to bench him. You have a duty to do so, just as you would anyone at any other position. What I don't get is the response where you stop talking to him and shutting him out. For all his flaws - and they have been duly noted - Jones isn't some spouse who cheated on you. Or stayed out all night with his poker buddies when he said he'd be home and couldn't make it to brunch with your mom and therefore deserves a cold shoulder. He's an asset that had immense value just two years ago, before everything went sideways. Who is practically worthless after two seasons of being treated like the kid who has cooties. 

And to those same coaches, especially Belichick, I defy them to show me the game film where Bailey Zappe looked appreciably better. If he did, all that better mechanics, decision-making and leadership certainly didn't lead to any more points on the scoreboard or games won.

Just so no one accuses me of defending Jones OR Belichick - and I can guarantee the comments section will come at me from both directions - let me be perfectly clear: I'm defending neither. I'm being critical of both. And of whoever the fuck inside the building deems it necessary to go spilling the tea on all this. In short, I'm ripping the entire Patriots organization from ownership on down for letting it get like this.

Qui bono? Who benefits? Whose career gets advanced by gossiping about how Belichick and Jones were zany opposites living together but started arguing so they drew a line down the middle of the apartment they couldn't cross and hilarity ensued? It has to be to someone's advantage to make them both look like inept, immature clowns. Because for sure it's not doing the team any good. It's not getting anyone who'll be left in Foxboro when the dust settles any closer to competing for a Super Bowl. The Patriots are supposed to be better than this Amateur Hour bullshit. 

How bad has it gotten? So bad that Mac Jones was right to tell the Jets they handled their QB situation better than New England did. And when you're worse at something than the Jets, your problems go way, way deeper than a struggling quarterback getting benched.