A Question You Don't Expect From Shank

The New England Patriots' record currently stands at 2-8. For the past quarter century Shank would've been blowtorching this team from every angle - players, coach, ownership, even the concession stands; all of it was on the table and more.

Is this Shank version 2.0 or something?

Aren’t we being a little too rough on Mac Jones around here?

Forgive me for not piling on this time, but I kind of feel sorry for Mac Jones.

Seriously.

Why the vitriol? Why the exaggeration? Why the demonization of this 25-year-old quarterback?

It’s not as though Mac invented a cryptocurrency scheme and stole everybody’s money. He hasn’t said that New England foliage is overrated, or that he hates Dunkin’ Donuts. He hasn’t complained about his contract, doesn’t appear to be juicing, and never tried to embarrass Dennis Eckersley in front of his teammates.

He hasn’t stomped on the Pat Patriot logo or burned sage around the Gillette Stadium sideline.

He hasn’t even complained about the Green Line. Not once.

Jones seems to be doing the best he can. And it hasn’t been great of late. It’s been pretty terrible. A Boston.com headline Monday read, “Mac Jones’s performance was the worst in Patriots history.” On Bostonglobe.com, the headline was “Mac Jones’s performance was the worst I have seen by a Patriots quarterback.”

Read on for a bit of revisionist history, which tends to reveal what Shank's doing here (and - also after Shank listening to Felger & Mazz say the same thing for the better part of four hours yesterday):

That’s the kind of coaching malpractice that has turned Jones into a puddle in his third pro season after being the 15th overall pick of the 2021 draft. The nadir came Sunday when Jones — clearly afraid to throw the ball in the red zone after getting taken to the woodshed by offensive coordinator Bill O’Brien — missed a wide-open Mike Gesicki in the end zone with a short, soft toss that landed in the arms of Colts defensive back Julian Blackmon.

'Coaching malpractice' will translate into 'it was Belichick's fault' in the upcoming months.

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.

Smoke And Mirrors

Never one to let a bad New England Patriots loss go to waste, Shank laments the end of a situation he cheerleaded for three weeks, complete with lame nostalgia, a Jethro Tull lyric mention (feel free to guess which one!) and baseball cross-references:

After Patriots’ defeat, it is easy to see the magic show was just smoke and mirrors

For a couple of minutes in the second quarter, it was Zappe Magic and almost felt like 21 years ago when young Tom Brady came out of nowhere and took the quarterback job from Drew Bledsoe.

In the first half of the prime-time “Monday Night Football” game against the Bears, Mac Jones was Wally Pipped by Bailey Zappe’s Lou Gehrig (Zappe even wears No. 4). Zappe was Elvis. He was Rudy — with talent. The fourth-round pick from Western Kentucky came off the bench and directed two TD drives in less than four minutes, rocking Gillette to its foundation, and taking the Patriots from a 10-0 deficit to a 14-10 lead. The golly-gee kid completed 4 of 4 passes for 97 yards. He threw a 30-yard touchdown pass to Jakobi Meyers and a 43-yard bomb to DeVante Parker.

Despite preposterous insistence that the Pats were planning to play two quarterbacks regardless of performance (lie detector machines exploding from Portland to Newport), our local quarterback controversy was in full (not Chaim) Bloom when Jones failed and Zappe succeeded in the first half. In that moment, Zappe officially supplanted last year’s Pro Bowl/playoff rookie, Jones, who came to New England as a first-round QB savior. It looked like the Pats would move to 4-3 and take Zappe Magic into the Meadowlands against the hated Jets this weekend.

DHL Dan CXL - Keep 'Em Guessing

Shank isn't too happy with the New England Patriots' recent roster situation:

Patriots’ attempt at a guessing game on starting QB was uncalled for, and other thoughts

Picked-up pieces while waiting to see Brian Hoyer play quarterback for the Patriots Sunday . . .

▪ Mac Jones or Hoyer?

What’s the difference, really? Jones has been one of the worst quarterbacks in the NFL this season. Hoyer has lost his last 11 games as a starter, with seven touchdown passes and eight interceptions. He has not won as a starting quarterback in the NFL since 2016.

Jones suffered a high ankle sprain at the end of last weekend’s home loss to the Ravens and we’ve spent the week assuming he can’t play against the Packers Sunday. But Bill Belichick dangled the carrot all week, insisting that Mac was “day to day” even though he did not practice Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday, and reportedly went looking for a second opinion while considering surgery. On Friday afternoon, the Patriots finally placed him on the inactive list.

Does Bill really think this ambiguity in any way confused the Packers? Is there really a competitive advantage to this stupid guessing game?

The above is, shall we say, heavily sampled from Felger & Mazz from Thursday afternoon.

Turn On A Dime Dan, A Continuing Series

After the New England Patriots placed a beatdown on the Jacksonville Jaguars 50-10 yesterday, Shank sees a resurrection of sorts:

Mac Jones is breaking down walls every step of the way. It’s as if he was invented by Bill Belichick

Rookie Wall?

Don’t be ridiculous. Mac Jones played a 13-game championship season at Alabama in 2020, where he was subjected to the same rigors and scrutiny he’s experienced during his terrific NFL rookie season.

When the Patriots lost a couple of games before Christmas, there was predictable noise that Jones had run out of gas at the tail end of the NFL’s 17-game regular season. He wasn’t allowed to throw the football on a windy night in Orchard Park, N.Y., and followed that with a couple of losing efforts, throwing four interceptions combined against the Colts and Bills.

For a full week after the loss to Buffalo, we heard about another brick in the Rookie Wall, the first-year Wailing Wall, and Foxborough’s Wall of no sound. Sports radio yakkers urged Jones to “take down this Wall.’’

It was one week ago when Shank was all but burying the Patriots and now expects us to believe otherwise.

Not So Hot Takes, By Dan Shaughnessy

With the Patriots winning yesterday's game against the Titans, Shank focuses on Mac Jones and one key aspect of the current football season:

Mac Jones can take the hits, make the plays, manage the game — and play in the cold

Mac Jones keeps checking the boxes, passing the tests.

Managing the game. Check. Completion percentage. Check. Pocket presence. Check. Taking the hits. Check. Inspiring teammates. Check. Winning close games. Check.

Now a new one. Mac Jones Sunday showed he can play in a cold weather game, too.

This wasn’t Patriots vs. Titans at Gillette in January of 2004 (windchill, minus 10 degrees) when Tom Brady and Co. beat the Titans, 17-14, in a playoff rock fight. It wasn’t the Snow Bowl Tuck Rule Game against the Raiders. It wasn’t Orchard Park, N.Y., in December (that’ll be next week).

But it was near freezing with snow showers in Foxborough and privileged folks in the red seats stayed inside by the big fireplaces while Jones completed 23 of 32 passes for 310 yards and two touchdowns in a 36-13 demolition of Mike Vrabel’s top-seeded Titans. Jones was sacked twice, but didn’t have to do much after a spectacular 41-yard touchdown pass play to Kendrick Bourne made it 26-13 with five minutes left in the third.

One game's an awfully small sample size, but we'll know more next week at Buffalo.

DHL Dan CLVIII - The Tuna Speaks

Shank caught up to the former New England Patriots coach and gets his opinion on a few things:

Picked-up pieces while stacking cordwood …

▪ Bill Parcells was the last Patriots coach to turn his team over to a rookie quarterback. In his first season as New England’s head coach (1993), the Tuna put the ball in the hands of No. 1 overall pick Drew Bledsoe and watched the Patriots lose 11 of their first 12 games. The Patriots finished with a four-game win streak, made the playoffs a year later, and went to the Super Bowl in Bledsoe’s fourth season.

Fast-forward to 2021 and Parcells likes what he is seeing from Bill Belichick’s Patriots and rookie quarterback Mac Jones.

“I’ll tell you something,” Parcells said from his Florida home. “I thought last week’s Patriots game was superb. I liked their time of possession [32:29]. That’s my kind of game right there. I really like that.

“The guy [Jones] is taking care of the ball and you had control of the game from beginning to end. You can’t ask anything else of a quarterback. If you can play like that, you’re going to win a lot of games. I really think they’ve got a good chance. I really do.

DHL Dan CLII - The Rookie Column

Seems Shank can't get enough of new Patriots quarterback Mac Jones:

Wondering where Mac Jones will fit among notable Boston rookies, and other thoughts

Picked-up pieces while waiting for the start of the Mac Jones era …

▪ Here in Boston sports, the list of our best rookies includes Ted Williams, Walt Dropo, Bill Russell, Tommy Heinsohn, Bobby Orr, Dave Cowens, Larry Bird, Ray Bourque, Fred Lynn, and Nomar Garciaparra. The best Patriots rookies probably were John Hannah, Mike Haynes, Curtis Martin, and Jerod Mayo.

But how many of them were asked to lead? How many of them were asked to get their first professional team to the playoffs? The 18-year-old Orr couldn’t get the Bruins into the playoffs in his rookie season, but of course, we never held it against him. There was so much ahead for the greatest hockey player of all time.

In the pantheon of Boston rookies to lead teams to the playoffs, my freshman four would be Russell, Heinsohn, Bird, and Lynn. Heavy on Celtics, I know, but basketball simply lends itself to team turnarounds triggered by a great new player.

The rest of the column - meh.

DHL Dan CLI - Mr. Excitement

Now that everyone and their brother has weighed in on the New England Patriots new quarterback, Shank gives us a take that's probably been said a hundred times by now.

The Patriots just got a lot more interesting with Mac Jones, and other thoughts

Picked-up pieces while counting the hours until the Patriots kick off against the Dolphins next weekend …

▪ Sign me up for the Mac Jones Era. The Patriots officially became the Dos Equis Most Interesting Team In the World when Bill Belichick fired Cam Newton and anointed Jones as New England’s starting quarterback.

Jones is a rookie, a first-round pick, and was a national champion for Nick Saban’s Alabama Crimson Tide. Now he’s the future of the Patriot franchise. Situations like this don’t come around too often in Foxborough.

I'm kind of bored with the column already (again, we've heard it already ad nauseum), but suffice to say Shank will be singing a different tune if the Patriots lose two in a row.

Another Swing And A Miss

Well, not just the fact I missed this one from a few days ago (not on his Twitter feed), but check out this great call:

We shouldn’t have wasted our time wondering. It’s clear who the Patriots will start at quarterback

Cam and Mac. Mac and Cam. It’s been a sports radio talk-a-thon, a gridiron soap opera, getting us through a hot/rainy August while waiting for games that finally count in September.

I don't know about you, but I find that verbiage extremely irritating, lazy and unoriginal.

Why did we waste our time wondering?

The Patriots final preseason game was Sunday night in the Meadowlands against the Giants (a 22-20 Patriot win) and it’s clear there was never any real competition for the job of Patriots’ starting quarterback.

Cam Newton got the start for the Patriots Sunday. Again. Even after a “misunderstanding” that took him away from the team for five days and would have landed any other Patriot a week in the Cooler. Not Cam.

Let's circle back to the beginning of the column:

Update: The Patriots released Cam Newton on Tuesday morning and named Mac Jones the starting quarterback.

Shank was saying something about coolers?

Change Of The Guard?

That's what Shank's thinking, after Cam Newton seems to have fucked things up over the weekend:

Doesn’t Cam Newton’s latest episode give the Patriots enough reason to start Mac Jones?

Call me a dreamer. We all know Mac Jones is the future of the Patriots at quarterback. And now I am hoping he gets moved into the starting job sooner than expected, because the Patriots can’t rely on Cam Newton … because Newton won’t get the vaccine.

The last time Bill Belichick wanted to change quarterbacks, he had Mo Lewis around to get the job done for him. A Lewis hit put veteran Drew Bledsoe in a hospital and Belichick was able to switch to a guy named Tom Brady.

Fast-forward 20 years and allow for the possibility that Belichick again might make a sudden change at quarterback. Is it possible that Newton’s hiatus will give Belichick the reason he needs to switch to Jones?

I recommend this column - Shank presses coach Bill Belichick for answers, which is like getting blood out of a rock, and the column's solid. I think the notion that Mac Jones will eventually become the Patriots starting quarterback at some point this year is pretty much a foregone conclusion around the Boston area; the only question is when.

The Starter

Shank rips off Greg Bedard of Boston Sports Journal, who appeared on the Felger & Mazzarotti show yesterday and said Cam Newton will be the Week One starter for the New England Patriots, and now so does Shank:

It was only preseason. By any definition, meaningless.

But Cam Newton on Thursday night in Philadelphia played like a man who’d heard enough about rookie hot shot Mac Jones. Newton helped his cause. And there seems to be little doubt he is going to be the Patriots’ starting quarterback at the start of the season.

We know by now that Bill Belichick loves Newton the way he loves Lawrence Taylor, special teams play, and the Army-Navy football game. Newton returned the love in Philly, completing 8 of 9 passes for 103 yards and putting two touchdowns on the board in the first quarter of New England’s second preseason game against the Eagles.

You can read the rest of it if you missed the game; if you watched the game, you already know that the rest of the column's a standard game recap (read - BORING!).

New Kid On The Block

Is Shank hopping on the bandwagon early this year?

I have seen the Patriots’ future, and its name is Mac Jones.

OK, that’s a little overstated.

It was only an NFL exhibition game, the most blatant example of consumer fraud in sports today. It was only five series of downs. Jones did not throw for a touchdown. He did not run for a touchdown. He completed 13 of 19 passes (11 straight at one point) for 87 yards against the Washington Football Team in New England’s 22-13 win on Thursday night at Gillette Stadium.

This was not Tom Brady taking over for Drew Bledsoe and leading the Patriots to a Super Bowl. It was not Lou Gehrig taking over for Wally Pipp and becoming the greatest first baseman in baseball history.