NFL preseason

Is Sitting Mac Jones and Patriots Offense Vs. Giants the Right Move?

Since Belichick isn’t going to bare his soul on why they’re sitting, here’s the litany of reasons he’d likely give

Curran: Are Patriots making the right call by sitting Mac Jones? originally appeared on NBC Sports Boston

The best tipoff that the Patriots wouldn’t be using their starters much in their preseason opener came Tuesday afternoon.

In what may have been the most sweltering day of the summer (but don’t they all seem hotter than the day before?), the "1s" worked deep into the fully-padded, two-hour practice.

Thursday morning, word began to trickle from on high that the starters were not expected to play against the Giants. That includes Mac Jones, pilot of a Patriots offense that has so far looked like this in practice.

Which will no doubt cause consternation/hysteria that life is but a breeze down at Club Belichick this summer. Assorted talking points for the 2 pm-to-6 pm crowd:

  • Why in God’s name would a group that’s sputtered on the practice field get the night off when it comes to an actual fake game?
  • Who’s getting better standing on the sidelines chewing sunflower seeds and watching Bailey Zappe?
  • Didn’t these guys just get the weekend off, then come back Monday and turn in an historically bad practice?
  • Camp opened July 28 and -- as of August 11 -- the starting offense still hasn’t even looked average in 11-on-11 activity. How ‘bout more work, not less?

All are logical questions/statements and the long-standing reply of, "I think the six-time Super Bowl winning coach Bill Belichick knows what he’s doing here, thank you very much…" is insufficient.

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It is fair to wonder why Jones and the rest of the front-line players will get most of the night off. Especially when the entire offense would benefit from real-time work with Offensive Coordinator X running the show from the sidelines.

Since Belichick isn’t going to bare his soul on why they’re sitting, here’s the litany of reasons he’d likely give.

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Preseason games pale in value compared to joint practices, and the Patriots have a slew of those coming up with the Panthers and Raiders. He’s discussed it with us annually and it makes sense. You get to rep situations over and over.

"The work and the quality of work that you get ... that’s what's really important to me: having another team that you can work with that shares similar goals where you can structure the practices and the days so that they can be productive for you and the other team feels that they can be productive for them," Belichick said when discussing joint practices with the Saints in 2016.

"We’re not really trying to gain an advantage here on anybody, and I don’t think anybody’s trying to gain an advantage on us. We’re just trying to get better, the Saints are trying to get better, and how can we help each other do that?"

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"This really isn’t a game plan, what plays we run against the Saints or what they run against us and that kind of thing, trying to create advantages or use schematics to give your team an advantage," Belichick said. "It’s more evaluating individual players against different matchups and letting your players learn the execution of the plays against a different type of defense or against a different type of offense than what we’re seeing over the last two weeks from ourselves.

"I think all those learning experiences are valuable, individually and for different units on the team, how to handle different problems and obviously things that we’ll be facing over the course of the year, and that’s really what it’s about. We’re not trying to do anything that they haven’t prepared for or vice versa. That doesn’t do us any good to go out and see something that we haven’t worked on and know that we’re not prepared for it."

Meanwhile, the upside of trotting out the starting offense for a series or two is minimal. Which is what Aaron Rodgers asserted earlier this week.

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“I don’t see any benefit to it,” Rodgers said to Packers reporters. “I definitely don’t see any benefit to playing one series. If we’re going to play, we should play and play a quarter, a couple of series, two to three series. Just suiting up for four plays, to me, is a waste.”

Jones isn’t Rodgers and the Patriots' offense isn’t where the Packers' is. So could the Patriots offense benefit from 10 snaps against the Giants? Sure. Does the risk of getting a starter injured in a meaningless game that’s doesn’t have the same structure of a managed joint practice outweigh the benefit? Probably. Could depth players and rookies benefit even more from getting to see the field in the first preseason game? Without question.

The reality for the Patriots right now is that they are up to their calves in the shallow end with this new offense. And they have their swim bubble on. Taking the bubble off and splashing around the deep end for four seconds just to say they did it? I don’t know how much they’d get out of that.

So while your brow may be understandably furrowed by the decision to sit the starters -- especially when it doesn’t seem they’ve earned a night off -- you can rest assured behind the scenes they are being ridden like mules and will have nowhere to hide when the Panthers come in next week.

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