Mac Jones hopes he and QB coach Joe Judge can "teach each other" in 2022

BOSTON -- Typically, a second-year NFL quarterback is going to lean on his positional coach for guidance. Generally, it's not the other way around.

This year in Foxboro, though, Mac Jones seems to believe he'll be doing some coaching of his own with Joe Judge, whose technical title thus far is "offensive assistant" but who essentially confirmed with the media last week that he'll be the new quarterbacks coach.

Jones, entering his second NFL season and first without Josh McDaniels by his side, said that Judge has a lot of experience in football but that the two will be learning together in the coming months.

"He has knowledge that is very beneficial to me as a quarterback, and obviously I'm going to learn with him," Jones said this week. "That's the goal, is to kind of, you know, teach each other and move along and take what he knows and then take the experiences that I have and combine them and work together as a great team."

Such learning may be necessary for Judge, who's never specifically coached quarterbacks in his career. He was a special teams assistant for three years at Alabama and a special teams assistant for three years in New England before becoming special teams coordinator from 2015-19. He pulled double duty in 2019, also coaching wide receivers, before leaving to take the Giants' head coaching job for the past two seasons.

It's a lot different, obviously, than last year, when McDaniels was the quarterbacks coach (in addition to his offensive coordinator duties) and had more than a decade of experience working as a QBs coach -- much of that time spent working with Tom Brady.

Of course, it's not yet known to outsiders who will be the offensive coordinator in the upcoming season, with Judge, Matt Patricia, and perhaps even Bill Belichick himself serving as possible offensive play-callers. Though the media only caught a glimpse of one day of OTA practice, it looked to be a collaborative effort from those three coaches in terms of relaying plays to Jones.

"Obviously [Belichick is] a great defensive mind, but he also has great offensive knowledge," Jones said. "They're all helping out and making things really easy for us and just teaching us what they know. It's been really good just to be able to stand up in the meetings and talk through things with everybody, and everyone's on the same page, regardless of who's talking or who's saying what. We have a very good group of guys. I think it's obviously always about the players, and having great coaches is obviously very beneficial, too. But we have a great group of guys -- old guys, young guys, and we're excited to come together and work."

Exactly how it will all work remains a mystery for now. But in the meantime, Judge and Jones will be learning together.