Mac Jones Is Our QB1

It seems that if Mac wouldn't have gotten to pick 15, I feel like BB would've traded down and drafted Mills in the second or third round. Either way, Mac seems to be much further along, but Mills has definitely been pretty good despite a terrible situation.

Mills had plenty of fans here. Anyone who followed the draft and did a smidgen of scouting could see Mills had good potential and would appeal to BB.
So I'm with you in believing BB would have picked him up if Mac hadn't been there. Mills has tools BB likes.

But Mac has more tools and has had better coaching. Plus Mac's a lot more athletic (for a QB) than many folks think.

Mac Jones is our QB1 (and I'm glad of it)!


View: https://twitter.com/MathBomb/status/1433238961711894529
 

Good read

Love this.

Butch Jones, the current Arkansas State coach who was an assistant at Alabama for three years, recalls Jones drawing out entire game plans by hand in a notebook. Sketching out the details, from the quarterback’s drop to the depths of the receivers’ routes to the protection up front, was how he dissected and learned every play, even before he was the one who had to run them in games. Logan Burnett, one of the quarterbacks who shared a meeting room with Jones during the 2020 season—Jones’s only one as a full-time starter—watched his teammate take this same approach for new concepts added in-season. Often Alabama would change the window dressing to make the same plays look different in order to create better matchups and get their best players open—a foundational tenet of how the Patriots run their offense, too. Instead of lining up in a 3x1 formation, they’d start in 2x2 and then motion to 3x1; or they’d add new wrinkles like a jet sweep or play-action. Jones would draw these out, committing the new version to memory and tracing out the mismatches that might be created.

“You’ve started to see guys really get knocked for that lack of mobility and pure athleticism,” Nagy says. “I think people will just be a little more careful not to ding those guys as much, if they have kind of the compensating factors that Mac has, and that’s instincts, football intelligence, accuracy. Those are compensating factors for the lack of a true dual threat.”

Maybe things swung too far towards the mobile QB.
 
Maybe things swung too far towards the mobile QB.

Maybe so. What I find to be a glaring truth from draft to draft is just how much imitation there seems to be. The NFL
is beyond question a league where imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Let's say a team drafts a really tall WR who weighs 220 and he has an all-pro year. The following year everybody will
take a longer look at big guys. I've seen it over and over again. Laquan Treadwell was a first-rounder because he reminded
people of Anquan Boldin, but Boldin was just an outlier in his ability to make contested catches without much speed. Treadwell
has been a disappointment as was Kelvin Benjamin, N'Keal Harry and a bunch of other big guys. That's a random example but
there are dozens and dozens of examples of imitation drafting and it hardly ever seems to work. I think it has to do with the
way the human mind functions. Folks feel more comfortable with what is familiar to them and become risk-averse to take a better player
who doesn't fit a template that the herd accepts.

Whoever does well becomes the trendy physical prototype and to a lesser extent the school and conference where he played
will be looked at with favor for a while, too. This works until somebody drafts a huge bust from a trendy school and then everybody
backs away from that place and finds a shinier one that is safer (for the time being).

The smaller, more mobile QB is popular because Mahomes, Jackson, Murray and Wilson played really well and everybody leans into the template
looking to solve their issues by drafting a guy that resembles the successful guys while often being blinded to their differences
and flaws.

Drafting guys is a very inexact science but I feel that people are better off figuring out who the good football players are without
trying to compare them to successful pros.

All the people who watched Alabama and somehow didn't notice Mac's exceptional accuracy and decision-making, but noticed that
he wasn't a dual threat were victims of the Patrick Principle. They fall in love with the sizzle and lose their ability to see the steak.
 
fantasy football/videogame mentality. flash>substance, to them agreed.

sometimes trends are schematic too. like when big 3-4 defenses were "the thing" in the early 2000s . i think that is partly imitation, partly coaching tree getting hc jobs and partly player availability. i am convinced that part of the reason bb shifted away from 3-4 base is that the proliferation of teams running it made it harder for him to get players in the draft. add to the difficulty of projecting 4-3 DEs as 3-4 olbs, etc. and it just made sense to shift away from it. also, once a scheme is more common, more coaches find ways to attack it. that's a reason i said for ages that these passing rules that led to small speed guys on d are eventually going to lead bb back to tough physical bruising run offense. i believe it may be a sun tzu principle of sorts, use the opponent's weakness against them. it's logical. the small speed guys don't wanna deal with the derrick henrys of the world(and yes, i know he's also pretty fast).
 
fantasy football/videogame mentality. flash>substance, to them agreed.

sometimes trends are schematic too. like when big 3-4 defenses were "the thing" in the early 2000s . i think that is partly imitation, partly coaching tree getting hc jobs and partly player availability. i am convinced that part of the reason bb shifted away from 3-4 base is that the proliferation of teams running it made it harder for him to get players in the draft. add to the difficulty of projecting 4-3 DEs as 3-4 olbs, etc. and it just made sense to shift away from it. also, once a scheme is more common, more coaches find ways to attack it. that's a reason i said for ages that these passing rules that led to small speed guys on d are eventually going to lead bb back to tough physical bruising run offense. i believe it may be a sun tzu principle of sorts, use the opponent's weakness against them. it's logical. the small speed guys don't wanna deal with the derrick henrys of the world(and yes, i know he's also pretty fast).

Completely agree. Case in point, last year's Super Bowl. A lot of people were sharing that Mahomes pass that he threw for like 40 yards while falling down. It wasn't important that the pass was incomplete nor that Mahomes got dominated that game -- people were keyed in on that one pass and the rest didn't matter due to the "wow" factor of it.
 
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Mac Jones has nothing to apologize for in the overall picture, but Matt Chatham made an interesting observation about the pick 6 to Howard.

He said when a guy comes off his man that fast it's because he could tell by the eyes and position of his shoulders exactly where Mac was going with the ball and
suggested that isn't the only time it's happened lately.

Does that mean he's developed a tell? A bad habit? I thought he's been pretty good as a rookie at looking defenders off with his eyes and that
general part of his game, but I'm not an NFL Cornerback.

If so, Jones will get that squared away. Let's say by Wednesday afternoon.
:rolleyes:
 

Mac owned both of his turnovers so I guess it's good...but only if he learns from those mistakes.
Josh McD has some fault with Mac's int, imo. The Dolphins were waiting for that pass and baited Mac for the int.
Watch the replay. Howard pretended to be covering our outside guy but he knew his S was coming up to cover him. That left Howard free to jump the pass. The S appears within a second or two as Howard made the catch. It's pattern match zone, something Flores learned from BB.
 
I'm still sticking with Mac Jones Is Our QB1

He stepped into a tough envirnoment(NE) and replacing him. He has promise and drive. With his mind set and determination he will work on what he can work on. It may not be this year but for me we came way further than I was expecting.

Mac Jones Is my QB1
 
All things considered Mac Jones proved he is a ligit NFL QB in his rookie season. Anyone that's not happy with that has completely unrealistic expectations. I'll say it this way, in one year of our rebuild we won 10 games, found a legitimate starting QB, and are back in the playoffs. Let that sink in for a bit. No matter what happens next week, this year has been a resounding success.
 
All things considered Mac Jones proved he is a ligit NFL QB in his rookie season. Anyone that's not happy with that has completely unrealistic expectations. I'll say it this way, in one year of our rebuild we won 10 games, found a legitimate starting QB, and are back in the playoffs. Let that sink in for a bit. No matter what happens next week, this year has been a resounding success.
Why anybody thinks otherwise is beyond me.

The guy is a rookie. He has made some incredible throws during the year and he clearly has the tools. And as a bonus, he seems to be a tough little SOB. He takes his knocks and keeps going. he's not the biggest QB out there, by a long shot yet he seems to be made of tough stuff and (touch wood) he's not made of glass.

Any issue we've seen with pocket presence, his reads etc are all eminently coachable and this is where he'll improve. And the really good news is he is extremely coachable by all accounts and a genuine team player and he is ferociously driven.
 
All things considered Mac Jones proved he is a ligit NFL QB in his rookie season. Anyone that's not happy with that has completely unrealistic expectations. I'll say it this way, in one year of our rebuild we won 10 games, found a legitimate starting QB, and are back in the playoffs. Let that sink in for a bit. No matter what happens next week, this year has been a resounding success.
It is really year 2 of the rebuild. Year one was jettison dead cap year.
 
Fair enough but the point stands, we are ahead of the typical 3-4 rebuild.
Just curious, what is the definition of when the rebuild is complete? 3 straight years of playoffs? SB appearance? SB win?
 
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