Following a disappointing offensive effort against the Buffalo Bills, Mac Jones told everyone he wanted to be coached harder. On Monday, in his appearance on WEEI’s Merloni, Fauria, & Mego’ show, he explained what that meant.
Jones is no stranger to tough coaching. He went to Alabama where he was coached by Nick Saban. Last year, he joined the Patriots with Bill Belichick and longtime offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels. This year, however, he says he wants to have more difficult conversations with his coaches about what hasn’t gone right with the Patriots’ offense.
“We’re all super competitive. Any time it doesn’t look good on film, we want to be coached hard,” Jones said. “That’s what our coaches are going to do. It’s everybody being accountable. That’s the definition of tough coaching – it’s hard conversions. If something may have not gotten right with a player, ‘hey, you did this wrong.’ As a player, it’s ‘OK, how can I fix it?’ I think our coaches have done that and we have to lock into that and ‘alright, what’s the problem and how can I solve it?’”
“We understand it’s us the player. We have to trust the coaches, which we are. They put a lot of hard work into it. That’s what we have to do. It’s a player’s game. We want to come together and play together.”
Jones noted the Patriots (6-6) “aren’t in a bad spot.” They’re one game behind the New York Jets for the final playoff seed in the AFC. Next up is the Arizona Cardinals followed by games against Las Vegas, Cincinnati, Miami and Buffalo. That’s a tough stretch.
For the Patriots to get in the playoffs, they’ll have to fix the offense. Right now, they’re 24th in yards, 20th in scoring, 25th in third-down conversions and tied for last in red-zone efficiency.
Jones says the team has to come together and play together. He added, “That’s what great leaders and great players and great teams do, they work through their adversity.”
For the Patriots’ quarterback, it starts with tough conversations with his coaches Matt Patricia, Belichick and Joe Judge.
“Those are conversations that we have and that’s internal and you want to be able to have those with your position coach or Matty P, coach Belichick, coach Judge,” Jones said. “It’s not fun at the time. Like, ‘Hey, you didn’t do this right or it didn’t look as good in practice.’ You have to have (those conversions). I feel like we have to do that more often and work through the problems. There’s obviously things we want to get better at, but that’s part of life. You’re going to have issues… We’re all on the same page in that regard.”
THE PATRIOTS made an addition to their practice squad by signing defensive back Quandre Mosely.
An undrafted rookie free agent out of Kentucky, Mosley has spent time with the Dallas Cowboys, Seattle Seahawks and Tampa Bay Buccaneers this season.
Mosley’s offseason started in Dallas, where he spent training camp before being waived on Aug. 25. He signed with Seattle’s practice squad on Aug. 31 and was released on Oct. 4. From there, he signed with the Buccaneers’ practice squad on Oct. 12 and was released last week.
Mosley was unemployed for five days before signing with the Patriots. A 6-foot-2 cornerback, he started his collegiate career at Eastern Arizona Community College. Mosley played his final three seasons at Kentucky where he finished with 69 tackles, 10 pass breakups and three interceptions in 36 games played.
The Patriots came into the week with one open spot on their practice squad. Mosley takes the 16th and final spot. He’s the only cornerback on the team’s practice squad.
AFTER THE loss to Buffalo, veteran wide receiver Kendrick Bourne expressed frustration over the team’s lackluster offense and its current direction.
Specific to the team’s struggles on third down, where the Pats went 3 of 12 versus Buffalo, Bourne suggested they should “scheme up better,” referring to the coaches’ play-calls and designs. He also said players are receiving sufficient coaching, and it’s on everyone to improve the offense.
Bourne’s position coach, Troy Brown, responded to those comments during a Zoom with reporters.
“We need to do it all better,” Brown said. “We need to scheme up better, we need to practice better. We need to play better. We need to do a whole lot of things better. So it’s just not one thing you can throw out there and say we need to do better. We just need to execute better, and that comes in every department of the building right now.”
On Thursday, Bourne said: “We need to scheme up better. We need to know what they’re doing,” Bourne said. “We need to know what they wanna do on third down, you know what I mean? It’s kind of sporadic. They call this, and we call that, and it falls right into what they want. You know what I mean? We need to have it where they’re falling into what we want, things like that.
“So that’s not my job, my job is to just run the call, but as we all can see, they had what — 30 first downs and we had eight?”
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