DHL Dan CLII - Picking Up Where Others Have Left Off

Shank's had nearly a full season of watching Patriots football and sums up what most other people have been talking about for months:

Mac Jones’s reputation has been taking a hit, and other thoughts

Picked-up pieces while wishing I saw Pelé just once …

▪ What’s up with the Patriots and Mac Jones?

As the Patriots prepare for their penultimate regular-season game vs. the Dolphins at Gillette Sunday, there’s nonstop negative narrative regarding their second-year quarterback.

Mac has regressed in his second season and is one of the worst quarterbacks in the NFL.

He actually has been bad since the first eight games of his rookie season. That’s a year and a half of bad.

He has been caught on national TV yelling at his coaches and teammates during games.

He couldn’t slow down Chandler Jones on the clown-show final play of the loss to the Raiders.

He presents as insubordinate and defiant of his coach. When Bill Belichick said, “We couldn’t throw it that far,” regarding a possible Hail Mary attempt at the end of the Raiders game, Jones came back a day later and said he could have reached the end zone. ”I know my number,” he said.

The rest of the column is the usual grab bag of stuff, most of it decent to good.