There’s trouble in paradise New England, and Mac Jones is at the center of it all.
Mac Jones’ name has been in the news all morning. There’s a report at Pro Football Talk that Bill Belichick has shopped Mac Jones to multiple teams this offseason. Mike Florio wrote that Jones was made available to more than one team. However, nothing materialized regarding a trade of the 2021 first-rounder.
“Per a source with knowledge of the situation, Belichick has shopped Jones to multiple teams during the 2023 offseason,” Florio wrote on Tuesday. “The full list of potential destinations isn’t known. The teams mentioned as potential destinations were the Raiders, Texans, Buccaneers, and Commanders.”
So, why is Bill Belichick so determined to move on from Mac Jones?
You might remember Chris Simms saying that tension between Belichick and the quarterback got “personal” during the 2022 season on an episode of PFT Live a couple of months ago:
Now Tom E. Curran of WEEI is reporting that Belichick remains “agitated” with Jones.
“The yelling and the gesticulations during the games [were] irritating enough,” Curran told WEEI recently, “but going outside the building for counsel, that really pissed Bill off. … Disloyalty, in Bill’s mind, is almost worse than bad play.”
“(Bill)’s still pissed about it,” Curran said. “How well are they gonna be able to bury the hatchet on Mac’s perceived and presumed disloyalty? And does (new Patriots coordinator) Bill O’Brien rectify that? Or is Bill still itching to teach the kid a lesson?”
When rumors regarding Lamar Jackson’s alleged interest in playing for New England surfaced during the owner’s meetings, Patriots owner Robert Kraft said that he was “a big fan of Mac.”
“I’m a big fan of Mac,” Kraft told reporters. “He came to us as a rookie. He quarterbacked in his rookie season and did a very fine job I thought. We made the playoffs. I think we experimented with some things last year that frankly didn’t work when it came to him, in my opinion.”
Still, I don’t think Kraft is sold on Mac Jones as much as he prefers to defer to Belichick regarding personnel decisions. If Mac is there, he’ll be a fan. If Belichick wants Jones gone, I’m sure he would also be a fan of that.
Nothing has materialized yet on the trade front, but that doesn’t mean it won’t. When a team that needs a quarterback doesn’t land one in the NFL Draft, Belichick will have another opportunity to shop Jones.