There's zero pressure as well. Clear throwing lanes, Thornton has his man cleanly beat, that couldn't have been easier.
JFC. It's impossible for an NFL QB NOT to complete that pass. And yet Mac pulled it off.
The Michael McCorkle "Mac" Jones Thread
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JFC. It's impossible for an NFL QB NOT to complete that pass. And yet Mac pulled it off.
Mac didn’t even put it close enough for Thornton to get a fingertip on it!! He missed by yards!!
I know we use this phrase too much but that is honestly a benchable offense. You simply have to complete that pass in the NFL.
I’m not sure how anyone can watch that play and think yep, this guy gives us the best chance to win.
It's hard to blame Mac for Jonnu, because clearly Jonnu was having issues that went well beyond QB play. Whether it was bad routes (coaches making clear it was him), dropping passes, fumbling, penalties, etc.
But Mac still sucks.
The issue is it's tough to say how much the other skill players suck or don't because Mac is so bad. At least we have eliminated the OL as the sole reason Mac sucks, and also I am a lot more optimistic about being able to field an OL with a potentially much better QB in the future.
But Mac still sucks.
The issue is it's tough to say how much the other skill players suck or don't because Mac is so bad. At least we have eliminated the OL as the sole reason Mac sucks, and also I am a lot more optimistic about being able to field an OL with a potentially much better QB in the future.
When you have a chance to give this guy snaps over someone like Boutte, you just have to do it. Between Agholor and Reagor, the folks in Philly have to be wondering what the fuck our staff is seeing on film to bring these guys in:
Good news though, Mike Gesicki who can't get open against anyone (and couldn't last year with Hill and Waddle generating gravity), and Hunter Henry can't block anyone. The one guy that, IMO, has been playing well, Pharaoh Brown, was back to being invisible.
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-boNT2INgw
Mac sucks and he's broken. But at this point, even if he throws a good pass, its got about as much chance of being dropped, or tipped up in the air by his receiver into the arms of a defender, as it does of being caught. Or if it's caught, his receiver will fumble it, or there will be a penalty bringing it back. The whole team fucking blows on offense. There are no redeeming qualities, and the defense isn't playing much better. If Sam Howell doesn't literally make one of the worst throws we'll ever see, that game would have been even worse.
We've just had several pages of examples of players being open and Mac getting tons of time and he still can't play.
I'm finished with the "surrounding parts" argument. Mac is by far the worst part of this team, and it has absolutely nothing to do with the players around him. It's because he fucking sucks. A QB is supposed to elevate his teammates (look what Dobbs did yesterday without Jefferson) and Mac makes everyone worse. If his receivers held onto balls they've dropped, Mac would be just as likely to fuck up on the very next play, because that it what he does.
I'm finished with the "surrounding parts" argument. Mac is by far the worst part of this team, and it has absolutely nothing to do with the players around him. It's because he fucking sucks. A QB is supposed to elevate his teammates (look what Dobbs did yesterday without Jefferson) and Mac makes everyone worse. If his receivers held onto balls they've dropped, Mac would be just as likely to fuck up on the very next play, because that it what he does.
I'm no QB expert, but I see this a lot with Mac. And decidedly less so from other, better QBs.
Lots of throws where the play is essentially over the moment the receiver is getting the pass. As opposed to their being an opportunity to make a catch and gain more yards. I don't know if that's due to bad play designs, bad route running, or bad throws. It's probably some combo of that all. But it wouldn't surprise me if it's mostly on Mac.
Watching that video is a huge indictment of Mac. Thornton clearly has a step on the defender as Mac is releasing the ball. It's a horrendous throw.
Mac is cooked. Tony Eason 2.0. One thing he's generally lauded for is his accuracy, yet I seem to continually see him passing to the backside of a receiver's body or behind him. And these are 10 yard passes. When's the last time he led a guy who could catch the ball in front and run with it?
I wonder how much the surrounding players thing might also be players becoming disengaged and dogging it because Mac sucks (or perhaps something else, BB having lost the locker room or something). There are an awful lot of lazy routes and routes broken off or times when Mac gets in somebody's face after a bad set of downs. The announcers are always like "and there's Mac getting in X's face because he was supposed to break right, not left" but maybe in reality X just doesn't care anymore and has stopped listening to Mac because even if he breaks right Mac can't get him the ball.
Why is that throw a "huge indictment" of Mac? Every QB misses wide open receivers.
Patrick Mahomes
Josh Allen and Josh Allen
Lamar Jackson
Jalen Hurts
Tua and Tua and Tua (1:13 mark)
Justin Herbert
That single throw isn't an indictment on Mac. All the QBs miss open guys from time to time. The indictment is the whole body of work that adds up over time. We can point to the bad OL play (a lot), we can point to dropped passes by WRs who are hit right in the hands (a lot), we can point to receivers not making extra plays (like Boutte not getting his feet down), we can point to bad calls by the refs (lots of those too), but at the end of the day, when game after game after game after game the Pats offense is just...pathetic, THAT is the indictment on Mac Jones.
Not a single missed throw, which happens to everyone.
If I were a WR on this team and Mac got into my face, I'd cue up the clip of that attempted pass to Thornton and show it to him as a rebuttal.
I think you're onto something. Mac has no right to get into anyone's face given he's playing like he's Helen Keller out there.
There's plenty of blame to go around. Even though in the post I just made in this thread indicts Mac for the whole body of work, the fact is, there's a lot of guys making terrible plays. Terrible penalties, terrible decisions, terrible blocking, terrible godawful drops of perfect passes (lots and lots of those).
Just as it takes a total team effort to be as great as NE used to be, it takes a total team effort to be as awful as NE is now. They're all complicit (though Mac, IMO, deserves the most blame).
That would make those players just as crappy as a teammate and unprofessional as Mac. And if it's happening routinely the coaching staff deserves much of the blame as well.
You know, I was going to tag on an obligatory "Of course we know that all QBs miss throws from time to time" but I actually thought that would come across as sarcasm directed specifically at you. So I abstained.
So let me speak directly... Yes, we all know that Quarterbacks of every skill level miss throws from time to time. Noting that is absurdly obvious and does absolutely nothing to advance discussion. Perhaps we should all create a personal page of caveats that we can footnote in our posts here so we don't need to append obvious qualifiers to everything we say?
That missed throw to Thornton is symptomatic of many, many, many throws that Mac has missed in his 3 years here.
I swear man, you seem like a good guy, but your shtick has become beyond tedious to me.
I agree, but my larger point has been that it all stems from horrible QB play first and foremost. All of it.
I would love to see what would happen if Mac got benched this week, for the entertainment if nothing else. Zappe sucks, but man, 2-7 sucks as well. Would we see players respond to a new QB? Would we still see the same mistakes and frustration? I don't know, but I would like to find out. I doubt we will, however.
I think I'm a good guy. I think you are too. This doesn't change that.
But I just don't like when people say things like you did - that a particular throw is an indictment on Mac, when you know that that's not really true, since everyone misses wide open receivers. We just focus on Mac's terrible plays, and rightly so - he's the QB on our team.
If my responses are a "schtick" then the things I'm responding to are also "schticks", yes? Or is it just me that has a "schtick"?
(BTW, I do hope that you saw the rest of my post too, where I laid the lion's share of the blame for the Pats' ineptitude at Mac's feet)
At this point I just don't know why we need so many qualifications and contextualization to say the QB play isn't good enough. We don't do that with the receivers or the OL. Everyone agrees they suck without much issue. Honestly, with every passing week the "yeah, but"s regarding Mac grow more tiring.
I'll just step out of this conversation and let you guys talk. I don't want to be any more of a distraction here than I've already been. My apologies.
BJ it's ok for us to use reasonable hyperbole to demonstrate a point. If Brady misses that throw no one cares. When Mac misses it, it matters because it dogpiles on his entire body of work and he has nothing positive to counterbalance it.
Mac has few positives as it is. When he misses a WIDE open receiver, by multiple YARDS, with NO pressure on him, and CLEAR throwing and sight lanes in front of him, it sums up the Mac experience rather perfectly.
Mac has few positives as it is. When he misses a WIDE open receiver, by multiple YARDS, with NO pressure on him, and CLEAR throwing and sight lanes in front of him, it sums up the Mac experience rather perfectly.
Let's pump the brakes here on Joshua Dobbs yesterday. If he quarterbacked the Pats the way he did the Vikings yesterday, you'd be shitting all over him. On his first possession (after Jaren Hall, who went 5/6 himself with 78 yards on his first 2 drives before getting knocked out), Dobbs took a sack for a safety, on his next possession, he was strip sacked and Atlanta recovered it at the 1. Then on the 1st possession of the 2nd half, he was strip sacked again and Atlanta recovered it at the Vikings 30. He also fumbled a snap, but was able to recover it.
He had 158 yards on 30 pass attempts, which I've been told around here repeatedly is awful. This was against the same defense that made Will Levis look like the next Tom Brady a week earlier (he crashed back Earth this week), and the only reason Minnesota won the game is because Taylor Heinecke and Atlanta were terrible in the red zone, leading to 4 field goals and Bijan and Heneicke turning the ball over in their own end on back to back series in the 2nd half.
And make no mistake, Jordan Addison and TJ Hockenson are better than any receivers currently catching balls for the Pats, Mattison is as good as Rhamondre, and their offensive line is much better than ours. Dobbs is a great story this week, but that's all it is at the moment.
Dobbs did something incredible yesterday given that he literally didn't know the plays being called and that KOC and his teammates were explaining them in sandlot terms in the huddle. Dobbs led his team to an amazing comeback last-second win, he did it without taking a single snap with the offense in practice, and he did it without living cheat code Jefferson.
Mac only wishes he could so something like that. Dobbs will likely never do anything of note again, but Mac can't even match that.
Mac only wishes he could so something like that. Dobbs will likely never do anything of note again, but Mac can't even match that.
Like I said, it's a good story, but that's all it is.
And you know you'd still be here shitting on him if he put the ball on the ground 3 times.
Granted, it's better than Kirk Cousins, who usually does the complete opposite when it counts, even with Jefferson.
If he put the ball on the ground 3 times but then did something wacky like, say, overcoming adversity to win a game? Not sure I'd be shitting on the guy for that, especially because in my posts above I noted that overcoming adversity is something Mac Jones cannot do at all.
Agreed about Cousins.
The schtick is jumping in to a comment like mine to qualify it. Everyone here knows that QBs make bad throws. Everyone. We all know.
It’s an indictment of Mac for the reasons that everyone here also knows. He doesn’t make NEARLY enough great, or even good plays, to counteract the multitude of bad ones.
He had an opportunity early in a game to make a play and he throughly botched it. Yes every QB has done similar at some point in their careers. It’s that Mac then spent the next 3 quarters doing almost nothing to add to the other side of the ledger. Which all of the QBs you replied to me with do every single week, in spades.
There wasn’t a great wide view.
There’s obviously a huge patch of open space that Thornton is breaking into.
See also the conversation upthread where we are told over and over again that the next guy might be worse than Mac, but that he thinks we should move on from Mac, but feels compelled to post over and over again that the next guy might be worse. It is beyond tedious and does nothing to advance the topic being discussed. Of course all QBs miss throws and of course there is no guarantee that the next guy will be better than Mac. Both of those points, while true, add absolutely nothing to the discussion as to the caliber of Mac's play yesterday and over the course of the season and whether or not the Pats should move on from him.
Dobbs has been surprisingly frisky all season. He's an *excellent* runner and that helps him quite a bit.
I am surprised he's been a cast off in so many places. He's much better than a lot of the shit teams are pumping out at QB, Patriots included.
Of course, Belichick would have benched Dobbs after the 2nd fumble and put Mac back in.
Asking the question because I'm genuinely curious. Would most NFL QB's look like that at the release point? Seems a little flat-footed to me, but I'm far from an expert on QB mechanics.
I watched all of those throws BJ linked too. I didn't see a single worse throw, aside from Tua throwing a duck that seemed to slip out of his hands. That type of thing happens.
Thanks, but can you grab it about 1-2 seconds later where you can see how far Thornton is away from the ball when the pass is "close" to him?
Took a pic using my phone. So close!
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The worst part of that throw is it's the kind that if Mac had put air under it (which he does on almost every throw), he hits him in stride. He actually stepped into this one, and put less air under it and completely missed it. Here's the full video:
https://www.nfl.com/videos/jones-misfires-on-fourth-down-pass-to-an-open-tyquan-thornton
Yeah, that's a truly bad miss. No pressure, guy open, streaking, in a huge window.
Damn.
His feet say it all right there. Tough to be accurate with that base and lead foot planted where it is.
Also shows terrible mechanics from Mac and you can tell he will throw the ball behind the receiver. His feet are all wrong and he is throwing across his body. Because of this even with the room to throw, he is still in danger of having this pass blocked.
So for people with problems with the throw to JuJu that ended with the pick--- where would you have preferred the ball to go? No one else was running any semblance of a route. So "throw it away" is the answer -- according to sone here, and Vilma on Fox.
Ok- throw it away, you have 25ish seconds on the clock, no timeouts, on a third down. That means you have to get a first down. Do you think that WAS wouldn't be sitting at the sticks? The in route, run up and spike.... maybe take a shot at a 3 yard out is the only logical sequence. It's like some people only play Madden for their knowledge.
Ok- throw it away, you have 25ish seconds on the clock, no timeouts, on a third down. That means you have to get a first down. Do you think that WAS wouldn't be sitting at the sticks? The in route, run up and spike.... maybe take a shot at a 3 yard out is the only logical sequence. It's like some people only play Madden for their knowledge.
Agreed. That was actually one of Mac's best plays of the game, just didn't work out.
Plenty of other terrible plays to choose from (including the horrible easy throw to JuJu right before on 4th down he got bailed out on) if you want to be down on Mac. No need to complain about one of his few good plays.
According to Bill - that throw was the read so if you have any issues it’s with Bill and BOB - not Mac on that one.
View: https://twitter.com/MikeReiss/status/1721511910737149998
there is so much to criticize Mac on this year IMO (footwork, decision making, handling pressure etc…) we don’t need to be making stuff up.
the worst throw I saw him make was the unnecessary half jump back foot loft to Rham who was open for a big gain in a critical spot
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I suspect this is mostly Jonathan Vilma's fault, as he blamed Mac for that interception on the air. I think he didn't realize that the ball hit the receiver in the hands until they showed the replay, and he's not yet agile enough to change course rather than continue his original line of thought.
I think Vilma thought the DB tipped it up not the WR. It was a tough throw, but it should have been incomplete at worst, just horrendous bounce luck (and some DPI). One of the rare ones you just say... "whelp not our day" and move on.
I could care less about diplomacy. The receivers suck and never get open. Mac misses them the few times they are open. But Mac was in a "no good answer" after being baited by the question.
Of all things to worry about Mac, his press conference answers are something like #1078 on the list.
It was also literally the only read on that play as Gesicki wasn't even attempting to run a route and Pop/Henry almost ran into each other. If that is the best play you can draw up when you need 7-10 yards with the game on the line I don't know what to say. The next time someone says Gesicki is an average TE they should be forced to watch that play on loop for an hour.
Here's a decent look.
View: https://twitter.com/Commanders/status/1721272999293202798
?
Gesicki runs what looks like a 3 yard hook? got doubled looked back (no way he thought Mac was throwing to him, I'm guessing to see if Mac is dumping to Stevenson and he should block?) then decides to run a flat late (with a depressing lack of urgency, seemed more about clearing a defender out of the middle and maybe being ready to block than a real attempt to present a target).
On the other side looked like the plan was for Douglasto run a whip into a 10 yard out. Henry I think was supposed to run a 5 yard out under him... but Henry just plowed into his guy for 3 yards, and either Douglas cut it too tight or something because Douglas trips over the feet of the defender Henry is pushing.
Rham is in to block then release, but he waits way too long.
Only options there were Juju or MAYBE swinging it to Rham and seeing if Gesicki can give him a lane on the sideline.
Amusingly... Gesicki for all that it looked bad and he basically was done after 3 seconds, might be the only guy other than Juju who ran his route correctly. Henry and Douglas at least 1 probably both messed up, and Rham took way too long blocking air instead of going into a route.
Though, the play is clearly designed for Juju in the middle to be the #1 option... Gesicki is holding 1 (or in this case 2) players on his side, Henry and Douglas are clearing out their guys to the right... hypothetically opening the middle for Juju. They got basically the look they wanted, Juju had a chance at it, just a bit of defense (interference arguably) and an unlucky bounce.
Hard to say without knowing what the starter situation is. Some guys need competition, some guys can't handle it. No way to know which of those Mac is without being in the lockerroom. I think they also got fooled by Zappe. They knew he didn't have an NFL starter arm, but he had a couple acceptable games last year. Him coming into camp and not being able to learn the playbook was a surprise.
If you can’t handle competition for your job, you aren’t the guy. Not just at QB, but at anything in professional sports.
There is SO MUCH blame to go around that I think it can be both. It takes a symphony of crap weapons, turnstile oline, and absolutely ghastly QB play to produce the turd sandwich that is the 2023 pats offense.
But I agree that if you could only fix one, I’d start with the QB.