The Case For Mac Jones*
*Just not over Justin Fields
Let’s get this out of the way right at the top. I think Justin Fields is a total baller. He’s my QB2 and would be the QB1 in most classes. His accuracy, arm strength, toughness, pedigree, and athleticism are off the charts good, and there’s a reasonable chance he’d be a Pro Bowl quarterback in the Kyle Shanahan offense. If I were Shanahan (I’m not), I’d sprint up to take Fields.
But that doesn’t mean that Mac Jones is a scrub either. In fact, Jones is a very good prospect himself. Calling him a lateral move from Jimmy Garoppolo or saying his ceiling is just Kirk Cousins is unfair and arguably lazy. Nobody in the Cousins, Garoppolo, or Teddy Bridgewater tier of “game managers” sniffed Jones’ college achievements, and none of them were being coached by Nick Saban and a plethora of top-shelf offensive coordinators in the years leading to the NFL.
Jones set college football’s QBR record, was in the 99th percentile in passing EPA, and in the 92nd percentile for passing touchdowns among drafted quarterbacks in their final collegiate season. And unlike the stat padders of the MAC, Jones did this against a 92nd percentile strength of schedule and didn’t lose a single game along the way. He ultimately graded higher in my model than Tua Tagovailoa did the year prior, and Jones did that with fewer weapons. Remember, Jaylen Waddle only played five games and Jerry Jeudy and Henry Ruggs were in the NFL.
No matter how we slice it, Jones was phenomenal in 2020, but let’s see how he got there and if any of it is translatable to the next level.
Pre-Snap
This is a very hard thing to monitor from afar. I don’t know the Alabama playbook, nor the exact playcalls of the opposing defenses. I have some idea of how much of a pre-snap expert he is by watching his film, but to be certain of this, we’d need to be in the room. With that said, Jones appears to grade out very well here. Bryce Rossler of Sports Info Solutions wrote this in his excellent breakdown earlier this month:
“Time to Throw Over Expectation (TTOE) is a metric that considers drop type and play action to set a benchmark for how quickly the ball should come out. Jones’ TTOE of -0.24 ranked 14th among the aforementioned group, but he was far more productive. The thirteen players who ranked ahead of him combined for 244 Total Points. Jones himself accounted for 196.”
This completely checks out on tape. The Alabama offense used a ton of pre-snap motion to give Jones more clues about the coverage, and Jones did a great job of finding the mismatch before the ball was snapped. That’s likely just because he understands the play call and coverage better than most, and explains why many analysts applaud his ability to get the ball out quickly. We all know he’s not doing that because he’s faster twitched physically.
A basic example: Jones gets a single-high look here, likely with man coverage because the CB runs with Jaylen Waddle on the motion and the outside CBs are staring at the WRs they’re defending. Each outside WR is running the same vertical route against the same outside leverage coverage, meaning there’s likely going to be a clean throwing lane inside when the WR turns. The free safety isn’t going to have time to break on the ball because he can’t get beat deep, so Jones can essentially stare down his WR this entire time. On the end zone angle, we can see Jones is doing just that.
One pre-snap misconception is that Jones is setting up his protections at the line of scrimmage more than other prospects. I didn’t really see that happen too often, assuming all of Alabama’s pre-snap motion and formation changes were pre-determined by the playcall and not Jones making those calls. The Crimson Tide looked to the sideline often before making these pre-snap changes, so I think I’m correct in saying that Jones wasn’t asked to make line of scrimmage protection calls in the same way that Trey Lance, or dare I say Justin Fields, did.
Processing
First off, this term historically has been biased-driven by NFL cocoon keepers with racial biases they are in denial about having. In this case, it’s fair to say Jones actually is a decent processor (although I’d argue he’s better processing pre-snap than he is processing during the play). He had the best passer rating on non-play action passes in 2020 and was third when kept clean per PFF, and these in-pocket metrics are the ones that have been most predictive at the NFL level.
A basic example: Jones has MOFO coverage pre-snap with his two best WRs at the bottom. After the snap and fake handoff, Jones immediately turns his eyes towards Devonta Smith because a LB is carrying him vertical. Jones ultimately doesn’t like the look with the safety over the top, so he goes to his second (or third) read across the field. That’s when he notices that top-side CB blitzed and that he now has a vertical WR in isolation against a safety with his feet stuck in mud. Three seconds later, that WR is in the end zone.
What we also see on this play is just how good Alabama’s protection was in 2020, and that’s what makes the Jones projection tricky. There really were just a few plays per game where Jones was dealing with pressure in his face, so it’s possible he gets happy feet behind a relatively worse offensive line at the next level.
Of course, the rebuttal to that is that QBs are responsible for some of the pressure they see, and Jones has been good at avoiding it, particularly compared to Justin Fields. PFF’s “Allowed Pressure” metric notes that Fields was partially responsible for 29% of his pressures while Jones was down at 18%. This stat paired with that SIS’s Time to Throw Over Expectation metric from above are reasons to believe he’ll avoid pressure more than most QBs at the next level, even if he’s not literally avoiding it with jukes inside the pocket.
Accuracy
The eye test and all charting shows that Jones is a very accurate passer. Rotoworld’s Derrik Klassen (it’s still Rotoworld to me damnit) notes in his Quantifying Quarterbacks series that Jones has good to great accuracy in all categories except throwing outside the pocket (and that Justin Fields is a MFin star).
QBs rarely become less accurate at the next level and rarely actually improve their accuracy like Josh Allen, so Jones has a very bankable trait to work with in all offenses. Jones will be able to distribute on play action and on normal three- and five-step drops in Kyle Shanahan’s offense if he goes to San Francisco, but he didn’t run the Shanahan staple bootleg at Alabama very often, likely because of his limitations as an athlete.
Athleticism
Jones isn’t Lamar Jackson. But he also isn’t Brock Osweiler, Ryan Mallet, or Nick Foles as an athlete. At his pro day (which I know, QBs’ pro days don’t matter), Jones showcased a 45th percentile 40-yard dash, a 65th percentile three cone, and a 80th percentile broad jump. He can’t just luck into those scores. He has serviceable athleticism for an in-pocket quarterback. Just check out these moves!!!
Will he look as sick as Trey Lance on bootlegs and QB power in the red zone? Of course not. Do those plays happen enough for Shanahan to make athleticism a priority? That’s debatable. According to this 2017 tweet, Shanahan only used bootleg on 10% of his passes. Jones can probably move enough to not look like a total idiot on that little volume. Matt Ryan, a similar athlete to Jones, literally won an MVP doing so.
With that said, having an athletic QB is such a cheat code on zone read, QB power, bootlegs, and while scrambling no matter the offense. Particularly early on in a prospect’s career. Being able to create on the fly counteracts facing more complex NFL defenses and the fewer practice reps NFL offenses are getting in the offseason nowadays. An in-pocket QB also has less wiggle room now with front offices appearing to have less patience with their signal callers, so an average to below-average athlete like Jones has to be really good upstairs to work out.
Arm Strength
This is the other part of “athleticism” for the position, and Jones is average (to below-average) here just as he is on the ground. Jones isn’t the backyard quarterback like the rest of the 2021 class is, and I’m not sure how many QBs have made strides with their arm strength at the next level. In theory, this lowers Jones’ overall ceiling.
As you can see, a few of his deep balls were underthrown at Alabama. It stinks that some YAC were lost on these throws, but at least most were still catchable and directionally accurate. Despite the forgettable arm strength, Jones had a 66% adjusted completion percentage on pass passes traveling 20+ yards through the air (4th out of 125 FBS qualifiers per PFF), simply because he’s really accurate…
… and because he knows when to take his shots. A perfect example of this point comes in Sports Info Solutions’ charting. According to Bryce Rossler, Jones targeted the outside receiver in trips formation on just 11% of his throws, likely because he knows he doesn’t have the cannon to consistently get the ball to the sideline before a defensive back breaks. This takes some of the plays out of the playbook, but as long as Jones knows what throws he can and can’t make, he should keep his turnover-worthy throw rate in the elite category.
Character
I’m only ever going to say things that are public about prospects and always want to remember that these are young, still-maturing adults. (Same!) From afar, we just don’t know who is a good person and who isn’t, so most of the time this is a segment to just skim past. In this case, Jones’ DUI (edit: only one DUI, not two) is impossible to ignore and deserve some digging into, especially when various other things have recently popped up on social media. Other QBs would be getting roasted for similar behavior, and it’s unfair how little attention this gets when anonymously-sourced reports get played on TV when it’s about Justin Fields. If you can’t spot the elephant in the room, well, then you just might be the elephant.
Conclusion
Jones is a forgettable athlete with passable arm strength, but everything else on the field looks pretty damn good to me. His production (career 56/7 TD/INT ratio with an 11.0 YPA) and advanced stats are exceptional. Particularly his accuracy, quick timing, and turnover-worthy plays metrics. I’m not sure anyone disagrees with that, so the debate is: 1) what about his college game is translatable, and 2) how high his ceiling is. And that’s just opinion vs. opinion.
To me, Jones is good enough in the pocket to make up for his lack of twitch, even in today’s NFL that’s loving dual-threat QBs for obvious reasons. He’s underrated moving within the pocket and isn’t so unathletic that he’s incapable of running bootleg or other play-action concepts. He’s also willing to take a huge hit and appears to be a pre-snap outlier like Joe Burrow. That’s a good baseline to work with from his film, and his stats suggest that his ceiling is higher than all of the QBs he’s often compared to:
… I just can’t rank him over Justin Fields.
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