New England Patriots: Midseason review of brilliant Mac Jones

New England Patriots Mac Jones has taken command of the offense and the team

After beating out former NFL MVP Cam Newton (a favorite in this space) for the No. 1 job, Jones has proceeded to simply dazzle. The quarterback is the team leader whether he wants to be or not. Jones has taken on that mantle and thrived.

And he’s done that despite some truly poor coaching and without a true No. 1 receiver. That’s taken some doing especially the part where his own coaches hung him out to dry needlessly with a sieve-like offensive line alignment early on.

Nonetheless, Jones did what anyone who paid attention to his sterling year last season with Alabama could readily see, complete passes all over the field.

Jones put up an all-time record completing 77.4 percent of his passes for the season for the National Champion Crimson Tide.

Now, in the red, white, blue, and silver of the New England Patriots he’s doing almost the same, but without the same comparable level of talent. Doesn’t seem to matter, he just makes it work.

Let see, in that most important statistic, completion percentage, Jones is now back up to (for him)  69 percent. That’s stat is pedestrian for Mac, and unheard for most others not named the recently retired Drew Brees.

To put it into proper perspective, the greatest of all time, Tom Brady has never had an annual completion percentage higher than 68.9 percent.

And that was once in 2007 with a certain Randy Moss on the other end of many of those passes. There’s no Moss on this Patriots squad.

Brady’s next best was 67.4 percent last season with a loaded offensive receiver cupboard in Tampa Bay. Jones has no such weapons at his disposal. No problem. He hits who he has anyway with his pinpoint passing.