"Zappe fever" is generating god-awful Mac Jones takes and other leftover Patriots thoughts
BOSTON -- Silly me.
I thought, having witnessed two decades of the finest quarterback play that's ever taken place in the history of football, that everyone in the New England region would have an elevated understanding of the position. A heightened education on greatness at the QB position. An existence on a higher plane.
I fear I may have been mistaken.
Not all that long ago, Jimmy Garoppolo was the next Tom Brady. Now nine years into his career, Garoppolo has clearly fallen a touch short of that high bar.
Then, Mac Jones was The Guy™. No doubt about it; the Patriots got their man. Those suckers who drafted Trevor Lawrence, Zach Wilson, Trey Lance, and Justin Fields were all fools. The prize of the draft came at No. 15. Welcome to Mac-achusetts, losers. Bill Belichick has once again won in this great battle of life.
Ah, but Jones -- in an offense primarily coached by Matt Patricia and Joe Judge -- got off to a rough start in the season, and then he got hurt.
Now? Now Mac Jones is garbage. Old news. Yesterday's trash.
Now? Now Bailey Zappe is The Guy™, Version 2.0.
It can be a bit dizzying, trying to keep up with the whims of New Englanders as many try to determine which quarterback will man the position for the next 10-20 years. And honestly, it's not outrageous if anybody believes that it won't be Mac Jones. Yes, he had a good rookie season, and yes, they made the playoffs last year, but the idea of a first-round pick not sticking around for the long term is not outrageous. Look at Sunday's opponent for evidence of that reality, as Baker Mayfield was The Guy™ in Cleveland, until he wasn't.
Look at the odd stretch from 2009-11, too. The Jets traded up to take Mark Sanchez at No. 5 in '09. The Bucs took Josh Freeman at No. 17. The Rams took Sam Bradford at No. 1 overall in 2010. A year later, Jake Locker went to the Titans at No. 8. Blaine Gabbert went to the Jags at No. 10. The Vikings took Christian Ponder at No. 12 overall. What was in the got-dang water that year?
Moving things along, Robert Griffin went at No. 2 in 2012, when Ryan Tannehill was taken eighth and Brandon Weeden was taken 22nd. E.J. Manuel was drafted at 16th overall in 2013. Blake Bortles was the No. 3 overall pick in 2014, and Johnny Manziel went at No. 22. Marcus Mariota was the No. 2 overall pick in 2015, one spot after Jameis Winston. Jared Goff. Carson Wentz. Mitch Trubisky. Sam Darnold.
Anyways, none of those guys lasted forever with the teams that invested first-round picks in them. In fact, many more first-round quarterbacks don't work out for the teams that draft them. So it's not insane to think that Mac may not be the quarterback of this Patriots team for the next decade-plus, as some people believed would be the case as recently as a few weeks ago.
That beings said ... the things being said about Mac right now are just plain stupid.
Fire up the Twitter application at your own risk these days if you're looking for thoughtful, level-headed analysis on the quarterback play in New England. As some fans would tell you, Jones has never had a single showing as good as Zappe's performance against the Browns. As some fans say, Jones has never once avoided a pass rusher before delivering a strike downfield.
This meme -- to some, not all fans -- does seem to be kind of accurate:
It's all ... a bit much.
To be clear, nobody in this space is declaring Mac Jones to be The Guy. But to act as if he hasn't shredded awful defenses, to act as if he's never beaten bad teams, and to act as if he's never thrown an NFL touchdown is an insane case of recency bias gone wild.
What the Patriots do have is a rookie backup who's already proven he can handle some big moments with aplomb. That's good.
What the Patriots don't have is a rookie backup who's put forth a display of quarterbacking that warrants naming him a full-time starter in the NFL at this point in time.
Down in Dallas, some people were saying that Cooper Rush should take over as their full-time starter, even when bona fide star QB Dak Prescott healed from his injury. That was despite Rush playing some pretty pedestrian levels of quarterback while leading the Cowboys to a 4-0 record. Sunday night's faceplant on national television provided a blunt reality check that such things tend to have a short shelf life in the NFL.
Hmm. Would appear as though I have ranted.
Let's move on to the leftover thoughts from the Patriots' 38-15 win over the Browns.
--Can we talk about the rookie class as a whole, though? That's what sticks out to me the most from Sunday's win.
The Patriots obviously had Zappe taking 100 percent of the offensive snaps, but they also had Cole Strange doing the same. Tyquan Thornton, in his second NFL game, caught a touchdown and ran for another. Marcus Jones and Jack Jones looked good on defense, with Marcus returning two punts for 39 yards. (He also might have had an interception, when he showed off some excellent ball skills while coming down with a pick on or near the sideline. It wasn't worth challenging though, because the PBU led to a fourth down and a punt for Cleveland.) On special teams, Brenden Schooler somehow had a once-in-a-season-if-you're-lucky play happen to him for a second time, recovering a muffed punt deep in opposing territory. And to a lesser degree, Kevin Harris and Pierre Strong got their feet wet with some carries for the offense.
Really, it was a 2022 fourth-round pick (Zappe) and a 2021 fourth-round pick (Rhamondre Stevenson) carrying the bulk of the offensive load in this one, indicating that the Patriots may be back on track with regard to their drafting.
--Not to be a speck of feculence in the punch bowl, but this needs to be said: The Patriots' strength of victory is still miserable.
Maybe that's not a household term, but it's simply a combined winning percentage of opponents that a team has beaten. And the Patriots may be 3-3, which is good, but they've picked up those wins over the dregs of the league.
Right now, the Patriots' strength of victory is just .294, having beaten the Steelers, Lions, and Browns. There's just one team -- the Browns, at .250 -- with a worse strength of victory in the AFC. In the NFC, only the Cardinals' .182 strength of victory is lower.
You may say "a win's a win" so this doesn't matter, and that's true. Yet in the larger scope of evaluating where the team stands in the league, it's something that cannot be ignored. (I brought up the Patriots' woeful strength of victory of. 394 after last year's 10-7 regular season and some people took offense. The Patriots then showed they didn't really belong in the playoffs in their lone postseason contest, getting their doors blown off on an embarrassing evening in Orchard Park.)
Unfortunately, the Patriots won't get to prove much of anything next week, when they host the 2-4 Bears on Monday Night Football. But a trip to MetLife to face the suddenly hot 4-2 New York Jets the following week is now an intriguing contest.
--DeVante Parker caused a lot of frustration in the region to start the year, and rightfully so. It seemed like every time Mac Jones threw him the ball, an interception resulted. And, well, that's not very good.
Yet there have been some more moments where glimpses of Parker show that his ceiling is clearly higher than anybody else in the receiving corps. Like this one:
He's had a weird year. He caught just six of the 14 passes thrown his way through four weeks, but he's now caught six of the last eight thrown his way. Sandwiched in between his two-catch game against the Packers and his four-catch game against the Browns was a zero-catch, zero-target game against the Lions.
--The Patriots' red zone offense was 3-for-5, which was an improvement over last week's 0-for-4 showing. But Zappe bears responsibility for one of the field goal trips, as he just didn't see a wide-open Hunter Henry on a third-and-goal from the 1-yard line:
It's unclear what else Zappe could have been looking for after taking that snap. And it was a missed opportunity at six.
--"Stop ... doing ... all ... of ... the ... penalties ... please."
The Patriots had 12 enforced penalties for 92 yards. Another penalty (illegal touching) negated a touchdown. One penalty (intentional grounding) pushed a field goal back from 29 yards to 45 yards, leading to a Nick Folk miss. One penalty (encroachment) gave Cleveland a first down on a second-and-4. Another penalty (pass interference) gave Cleveland a new set of downs after a third-down incompletion.
The penalties, they are a problem.
(But not against the Browns.)
I almost turned a Cap'n Crunch "Oops! All Berries" box into a Patriots "Oops! All Penalties" box via PhotoShop but shoutout to me for not doing that. I think it's a real credit to my growth as a human.
--Speaking of things I almost did but didn't, I almost tweeted something not nice about Jacoby Brissett. Something along the lines of "the Patriots started Jacoby Brissett's career and they also appear intent on ending it." But again, credit to me for not tweeting that or anything like it. Very classy of me.
--For as much as we do the whole quarterback "controversy" talk, we should note this: For as long as Isaiah Wynn is at right tackle, playing quarterback for the New England Patriots remains a legitimate hazard.
Marcus Cannon is working himself back into game shape, taking plenty of in-game reps. But man. The Wynn thing. Not getting better.
--NFL officiating has been under the microscope lately, which tends to happen every year. So it stood out as a particularly uninspiring moment when Scott Novak called for a chain measurement when the football was an entire yard short after a fourth-down QB sneak by Cleveland.
Great job, everybody. Now let's talk to the league about potentially making little marks on the field to symbolize each yard. That way, we can get a better idea of what we're working with out there.
--The first time the Patriots ran an end-around for Tyquan Thornton, it ... worked out poorly.
Credit to the coaching staff for keeping things a bit simpler later on with the jet sweep to Thornton for a touchdown:
--Always nice to see a Zero Humans Defense crop up when you're least expecting it.
Those don't quite happen with regularity anymore. This one was all about a defender falling down, rather than a defense forgetting about a receiver's existence. Nevertheless! It counts.
--We also had a Ferocious Juke!
Count it.
Stevenson runs so hard -- and fast -- but his jump-cut ability is next level. A really fun back to watch.
--I wrote a whole story about that Zappe kid (you can read it here at absolutely no cost to you, thank you), but wanted to reiterate that these two plays by him were what impressed me the most.
Those plays only accounted for 27 of his passing yards, but they were winning plays.
--This Green fella really blew it for the Browns.
That penalty was a massive bailout for the Patriots. Would New England's defense have been able to stop the Cleveland offense? Well, yeah, probably. But! Cleveland would have had possession near midfield, trailing by nine with more than 6 minutes left to play. At the very least, the game would have been interesting. Instead, Chester Rogers muffed a punt, and the game got out of hand.
--Credit to the Patriots' social media team for leaning into their remake of the hastily made Cleveland tourism video.
So many non-deep-internet users must have been so confused seeing that before and after the game.
--Let's end with a lighter moment. This one actually made me want to fold into myself and disappear.
The secondhand embarrassment. Is overwhelming.
To be fair, Schooler is an undrafted rookie playing in his sixth career game. Bill Belichick is a 70-year-old man with 48 years of experience on an NFL sideline. His excitement for winning a football game against the Browns -- even if it was one that got him into a tie with George Halas for second on the all-time list -- is naturally going to be a few steps lower than Schooler's.
Credit to special teams coordinator Cam Achord for making the interception. Just one step too late, unfortunately.
You can email Michael Hurley or find him on Twitter @michaelFhurley.
