Even If No Trade Happens, Mac Jones Will Need to Earn His Spot Back

Bill Belichick’s reported shopping means the Patriots, and returning OC Bill O’Brien, have decisions to make at QB that will define their offseason.

Three weeks until the draft. Let’s see what you guys had for me …

From OneKumar NFL (@OneKumar_NFL): LJ to the Patriots with Max Jones on the rocks?

From Rizzy (@ImK1utch): What is going on with the Mac Jones situation with Belichick, and what are trade packages for him like?

Mac Jones, you mean, Kumar? Yeah, I still tend to doubt it. But that has more to do with Lamar Jackson’s price than any sort of feeling that Mac is affirmed as the Patriots’ future.

I said it back in the middle of February, when no one wanted to hear it—Bill Belichick wasn’t happy with how Jones conducted himself through the 2022 season, which I believe is a reason why, for six months (from the time when Bailey Zappe gave the team a spark back in October, to where we are now), the coach has refused to say Jones is his starter going forward. And regardless of what you think about the spot Belichick put Jones in last year with the offensive coaching (a tough one), Belichick’s opinion still counts more than anyone’s in Foxborough.

That’s why I think the news that Belichick shopped Jones, news that ProFootballTalk reported Tuesday, may have come to prove a point the coach has often made to players who’ve gone sideways with the organization—no one is on scholarship on the Patriots’ roster. I hit up the teams Mike Florio named in the report. A couple told me they hadn’t heard from the Patriots at all. Jones’s name did come up in conversation with one, but he wasn’t shopped to that team, per se.

So what to make of it? Well, I know the rumor circulated inside the Patriots facility just before the owners meetings at the end of March. And certainly, the idea wasn’t a new one—we’d discussed, back in February, the concept of New England considering overtures on Jones. But it is unorthodox. You don’t have the Dolphins letting things linger on Tua Tagovailoa like this, or the Bears allowing drama to creep in on Justin Fields. Yet, there the Patriots were, at least amenable to Jones’s name coming up in talks with other teams.

That, by the way, is often how these things happen. After the season, around the combine, and ahead of free agency, teams talk to every other team about their rosters, discuss who is and isn’t available and float different ideas. That Jones isn’t immune to being a part of those conversations, again, isn’t the most outrageous thing I’ve ever heard, based on the state of the relationship, but it is very, very notable.

It doesn’t mean a trade is coming. It does mean relationships here are in a weird spot.

As for his trade value, Rizzy … I don’t think the Raiders would give up the seventh pick for him. I don’t think the Texans would give up No. 2 or No. 13. I don’t think the Commanders would hand over No. 16 for him, either. So it’s a pretty low sell by trading him now.

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From TanktasticTweets (@TanktasticT): With Mac Jones on the way out, do you see Bailey Zappe or a late draft pick starting for them in 2023? Also with their defense, do you think they’re good enough to win 5 games?

Tank, Mac isn’t on the way out yet, anyway.

Jones threw 14 touchdowns in 2022, eight fewer than in his rookie year.  :: Gregory Fisher/USA TODAY Sports

But I do think Belichick is going to make Jones earn his spot back, and that’ll leave the door open for Bailey Zappe to compete for it. How does he compare? By the end of last year, the coaches didn’t think there was a massive chasm between the two. Jones has the physical edge, but not by a mile. Jones is also incredibly football smart, but Zappe’s sharp, too, and last year’s staff felt like Zappe closed any gap there by following the coach when Jones didn’t.

I will say both look to be in a position to get rolling. Jones has been in the Patriots facility on a daily basis as of late, lifting, studying and popping into the offices of the new offensive staff. Zappe has been, too. So it’ll be interesting to follow this through the spring and summer.

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From Raz (@MoparRaz): Looks like the Raiders will go defense in the draft, do you think they still try to trade up to No. 3 with Hoyer signing?

Raz, I don’t think the Brian Hoyer signing has much material effect on the Raiders’ draft plans at all. He’ll be a great resource, really, for everyone in the building, and Jimmy Garoppolo, especially. Hoyer will be a nice addition regardless of whether Las Vegas takes Anthony Richardson or Peter Skoronski or Devon Witherspoon, or you or me. (I think I’m draft-eligible.)

I also don’t believe the Raiders will trade up, because there are enough needs in the middle of the roster to where my sense would be that Dave Ziegler and Josh McDaniels will have a good volume of picks. And if I had to guess, I’d say it won’t be a quarterback at No. 7. The player I have circled early on for Vegas is Witherspoon. He played for McDaniels’s old staff mate Bret Bielema at Illinois. He played at a needed position. His makeup, I’m told, is top notch.

Why look so closely at the quarterbacks, then? Two reasons. One, picking that high, with quarterbacks expected to go in that range, you need to know what you’d be passing on, at a baseline—and maybe someone blows you away, and you wind up taking him. Two, it doesn’t hurt, from a trade perspective, to have other teams thinking you might take one.

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From Tyler Hergert (@TylerHergert): Has the NFL ever considered having the Super Bowl at one venue like how The Masters is only at Augusta?

No, Tyler, there’s too much money to be made bidding it out, and in giving cities years of runway to build up toward hosting it—so every one of them feels like the biggest thing in the world.

But if it were up to me? All of them would be in New Orleans.

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From Nik (@nikhargis): Is there any way the NFL would consider moving the draft to the weekend after the Masters? The end of April seems too long …

Multiple Masters questions this week! Nik, I think they like the draft where it is. They want to have space between free agency and the draft, so there’s a longer run-up to the draft, and so they can occupy more of the sports calendar. In fact, this was enough of an incentive for the NFL that they tried moving the draft back, putting it on the second weekend in May in 2014, an experiment that didn’t really work. (They moved it back to April the next year.)

It also, for what it’s worth, wasn’t well received by teams, who got their rookies two weeks later (costing those rookies two years in their teams’ offseason programs) and had a process that’s already drawn out stretched even more.

Add that up, and the conclusion was that the last weekend of April is a nice spot for it.

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From Thomas Allison (@ThomasAllison5): If the Pats trade for @DeAndreHopkins, how big is your bonus payment for attempting to drive down the price?

Thomas, Cardinals fans this week heard me say what I passed along on DeAndre Hopkins on my buddy Greg Bedard’s podcast—that some teams think his sagging trade market is a result of teams being convinced that Arizona will eventually be forced to release him. And in saying that, those fans figured I’m in some sort of double-agent arrangement, working a gig to get players to the Patriots on the side.

I’d love to hear how people in Foxborough would react to that accusation.

Hopkins recorded 717 receiving yards in nine games played in 2022. His career-high came in ’18, when he posted 1,572 yards (across 16 games) :: Michael Chow/The Republic / USA TODAY NETWORK

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From Brady Skinner (@skinzski): Do you like football, please comment. Thank you

Love football, Brady. Thanks for asking.

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From Brett (@brett98072): How many teams have taken Jalen Carter off their draft board?

At this point, Brett, I know at least a couple. This is a complicated one. Really, the questions on Carter going into the draft process—questions surrounding his football character, his on-the-field motor, who he is as a teammate, etc.—all came with the caveat that it was “nothing criminal.” That caveat was removed during combine week, when warrants for his arrest were issued in connection to an incident that left one of his teammates and a Georgia recruiting staffer dead.

The flip side is we’re talking about the best talent in the draft class, better than Will Anderson Jr., better than any of the quarterbacks and good enough to be considered the best talent on last year’s Georgia defense, too, when he was a true sophomore and five 2022 first-round picks were suiting up alongside him. That talent, to be sure, protects his stock. Barring more revelations, or a series of bad interviews, he’s certainly not falling out of the first round, and he probably won’t fall out of the top 15.

That said, in the upper reaches of the draft, there are, (a), a lot of prospects who check a lot of boxes without these sorts of problems, and, (b), teams that may not be in a position to take on a mercurial personality. That’s why I liked my buddy Daniel Jeremiah’s suggestion that Carter’s agent, Drew Rosenhaus, might have decided Carter wouldn’t meet with teams outside the top 10 because, well, the Eagles pick 10th. Philly is a team with the infrastructure (not to mention a number of Carter’s former Bulldogs teammates) to handle him.

Also, the idea of Jordan Davis on the nose and Carter at the 3-technique for the foreseeable future is a pretty frightening prospect.

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From Chris ‘Evo’ Evans (@chrisevoevans): Will the upcoming football World Cup in 2026 lead to teams replacing turf fields with proper grass, to meet FIFA requirements and help with player safety longer term?

Chris, in short, no. They’re doing it because they want to have the World Cup in their stadiums, and because to get the World Cup they have to, period, end of story.

Rolling a grass surface out there, and maintaining it for a month of soccer, is far, far different than maintaining one for football over months and years. And it becomes even more difficult to do it if you’re putting a zillion events in your stadium, which is why you see more and more owners tearing up natural grass surfaces and putting down turf.

The math is pretty easy. The price point for stadiums and teams has gotten to the point where owners feel like they can’t justify the investments they’re making for only 10 football dates a year. So they feel compelled to, again, get every event under the sun to come to their venue. The more events you have, the harder and more costly it becomes to maintain a grass surface. Which leads an owner to lay down the fake stuff, even in places like Charlotte, where the weather is far less of a factor than it is in the Northeast or Midwest.

There is the option of doing what the Raiders and Cardinals do, with rollaway fields. The problem is not everyone has the land to do it. And even those that have the space don’t want to give up potential parking or retail space by having a spot for a football field outside the actual stadium.

So, yeah, this, like everything else seems to be, is about money. They also all could spend for a system like Real Madrid’s. But … you get the picture.

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From Addy Field (@Addyfield): With the huge success of the international series, can you ever see an NFL draft hosted in London or Germany as it seems they do like to take it on the road?

Addy, I think the league would love the idea of putting a Super Bowl or draft over there.

The problem, naturally, is what it’d mean for television. They want those events in prime time. And, unfortunately, prime time in the States is the middle of the night over in Europe. So to make this work, you’d either have to have a game or the draft starting at like midnight local (not happening), or you’d have to allow early afternoon starts, U.S. time.

Maybe, someday, the NFL will be amenable to the latter. But that day is not today.

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From KS (@Shamrock2232): Percentage chance you think Brady comes out of retirement this season?

Eh … I don’t know, maybe 5%?

There are a lot of family-based reasons Tom Brady walked away that make me think he’s done playing … for good, this time. And I do know his plan is to study broadcasters this year, ahead of jumping in with Fox in 2024. What I don’t know, and I don’t think he knows, is what July and August and September will feel like for him without football. If there’s an injury somewhere, would he watch to scratch that itch, when the commitment is for, say, three or four months, rather than 10 months? That’d be the unpredictable part of this.

But I don’t think there’s any plan, for right now, to jump back in.

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From Ronan Murphy (@swearimnotpaul): Who is taller? Bryce Young or three children in a trenchcoat?

That’s not cool, Ronan.