Alabama quarterback Mac Jones is a…perplexing evaluation. Ask any draft analyst about Mac Jones’ NFL Draft projection and you’ll probably get different answers all across the board, and as such, predicting his landing spots contains the same volatility.
Here at Pro Football Network, Tony Pauline’s mock draft has Mac Jones 12th overall to the San Francisco 49ers, while Matt Williamson mocked Mac Jones eighth overall to the Carolina Panthers. In my latest mock, I had Carolina trading up to take him at pick 27. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Carolina has been incessantly linked to Mac Jones after the Senior Bowl.
Background on Mac Jones
A three-star quarterback, Mac Jones stepped onto the Alabama campus with little fanfare. All the attention was focused on the 5-star phenom from Hawaii: Tua Tagovailoa. Tagovailoa was the No. 1 dual-threat QB in the recruiting rankings. Mac Jones, on the other hand, was the 18th-ranked pro-style QB. In addition, both of them were behind Jalen Hurts on the Alabama depth chart, the player who had just taken the Crimson Tide to the title game.
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Unexpectedly, Tua was carted off with an injury against Mississippi State in 2019 with just two regular season games and a bowl game left. All of a sudden, Mac Jones was thrust into the starting lineup. Jones played well, despite his rapid advancement in duties. Against some tough defense in Auburn and Michigan, Mac Jones went 42-of-64 for 662 yards and 7 touchdowns to just 3 interceptions.
Mac Jones’ 2020 season
Mac Jones entered the season as the incumbent starter. The situation around him was great. Despite losing OT Jedrick Wills and WRs Jerry Jeudy and Henry Ruggs III to the 2020 NFL Draft, Alabama had plenty of talent on offense. The Alabama coaches had placed their faith in Mac Jones and his ability.
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That faith was clearly rewarded. The signal-caller was awarded the Davey O’Brien Award and finished third in Heisman voting this season. The Alabama offense was No. 1 in the country and piled up points on every team. Most importantly, the team won the National Championship with Mac Jones at the helm.
Mac Jones is a troubling draft projection
However, several questions cloud Mac Jones’ draft projection. Jones flies in the face of the way the NFL game is evolving. The trickiest part of evaluating Jones is separating him from his situation. The Alabama offense had a Joe Moore Award-winning offensive line, a Heisman-winning wide receiver, another wide receiver projected top 10, a Doak Walker Award-winning running back, a Rimington Award-winning offensive lineman, and an Outland Trophy-winning offensive tackle.
On top of that, their offensive coordinator, Steve Sarkisian, was just hired to be the Texas Longhorns head coach. To say that Mac Jones was in an ideal situation would be the understatement of the century.
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Therein lies the problem. Jones benefitted from one of the best offenses in history. The scheme was the best in college football. His receivers were running wide open all season long. This won’t be the case in the NFL. The parity between each NFL team is greater than what Alabama had versus every CFB team this season.
According to Sports Info Solutions, 58% of Mac Jones’ throws were RPOs, screens, or off play-action. Just 181 throws were standard dropback passes. In the NFL, we call that an overly-protected quarterback. Accordingly, quarterbacks like Mitch Trubisky and Jared Goff have been protected with heavy play-action, screens, and RPOs. While they put up productive numbers (yards/touchdowns that don’t really measure QB play), they clearly limited their offenses.
Does Mac Jones have a first-round quarterback draft projection?
If you asked me this question when I first started scouting, I would have said absolutely. My first draft was the 2014 NFL Draft, where Blake Bortles, Johnny Manziel, and Teddy Bridgewater all went in the first round. Teddy was my QB1 for a lot of the same reasons Mac Jones was.
However, this isn’t 2014 anymore. The game has changed considerably. What Mac Jones does is the opposite of where the NFL is trending. Pocket passers are starting to go the way of the dodo. From SIS, about 27% of NFL throws occurred from a compromised throwing base since 2019. Mac had only 17% of his throws be deemed off-platform per SIS.
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If you look around the league, the top of the game is championed by some ridiculously talented quarterbacks. Patrick Mahomes, Aaron Rodgers, Russell Wilson, Dak Prescott, Deshaun Watson, Josh Allen, and Lamar Jackson are all guys who win with elite arm talent and can hurt defenses with their legs. In this draft class, Zach Wilson is ballyhooed for his off-script ability.
There are a few quarterbacks who are still playing at a high level without crazy arm talent. Tom Brady just won the Super Bowl. The New Orleans Saints offense was clicking well, but Drew Brees retired and was clearly hurting the team. Ben Roethlisberger’s mobility is all but gone, and Pittsburgh made it into the playoffs in spite of him. The 49ers made it to the Super Bowl but couldn’t ice a win over Mahomes with Jimmy G at the helm.
The problem? All but Jimmy G were drafted well over a decade ago. Brady shouldn’t be the defense for Mac Jones either, considering Brady is the greatest QB of all-time.
What scheme will get the most out of Mac Jones?
Mac Jones needs to go to a place where he is protected by everything else around him. I would have suggested the New Orleans Saints as a landing spot, but they seem content with Taysom Hill and Jameis Winston for this season.
He’ll need a good-to-elite offensive line protecting his statuesque play. He’ll need to have a good play-caller at the helm who knows how to scheme guys open. Lastly, he’ll need to have plenty of weapons around, otherwise, the offense won’t be taking off.
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Mac Jones will also need a coach that has patience. Mac Jones isn’t perfect mentally, and as was illustrated earlier, hasn’t participated in a standard dropback scheme — this affects his landing spots. He’ll need to bring that game up to snuff if he hopes to reach his ceiling.
The problem is twofold with that. One, coaches and teams aren’t patient anymore. Teams will cycle quarterback after quarterback in an effort to find the guy. Mac Jones’ limitations might just shorten the patience even further and reduce his NFL landing spots. Second, his ceiling isn’t much higher than the floor. Most quarterbacks get developed because they possess good-to-elite physical talent. Jones is right about average across the board. What are you developing?
As such, it makes the draft projection for Mac Jones very difficult.
Mac Jones Draft Projection: Possible landing spots and team fits
Carolina Panthers
The Panthers aren’t exactly where I would say Mac Jones would fit right in, but the buzz and smoke around this link are too much to ignore. There has been nothing short of constant buzz behind Mac Jones to Carolina since the Senior Bowl. It’s puzzling because the Panthers have been reportedly frustrated with Bridgewater’s average physical profile, and Mac Jones isn’t exactly dripping with physical traits.
However, the Panthers possess offensive talent around him in D.J. Moore and Christian McCaffrey. Joe Brady will also be calling the offense, at least for 2021.
San Francisco 49ers
I see this one linked a lot — Shanahan is the game’s best play-caller and the 49ers can seemingly put any quarterback in their scheme and achieve success. However, I’m not sure it makes sense for a couple of reasons. Firstly, why would Shanahan move on from Jimmy G just to get another one? If he has to protect this QB the same way, why would he move on from the one that already has chemistry with the roster and years with his playbook?
Second, Shanahan seems fed up with that mold of quarterback. After a December loss to the Buffalo Bills (quarterbacked by Josh Allen), Shanahan had this to say about evaluating quarterbacks:
“How I evaluate everything is always changing. Things change, people change. You start to see you can win football games with any type of quarterback as long as they are good enough and you can be good enough in hundreds of different ways. So, I evaluate quarterbacks in terms of trying to find people who can have a chance to be one of those elite-type guys and there’s lots of different ways to do it….. You’re just trying to find a guy who is better than about 98-percent of the people on this planet or in this country and when you find that, you get him and you adjust to him.”
Better than the 98% doesn’t exactly scream Mac Jones territory.
New England Patriots
Another commonly associated team with Mac Jones, New England is a team facing quarterback-of-the-future questions. Cam Newton re-signed, and while he played well in New England, he’s back on just a one-year deal and will be 32 when the season starts. New England has drafted a few game-manager quarterbacks (no, Tom Brady is not a game manager) in guys like Matt Cassel and Jimmy Garoppolo, so Mac Jones makes sense in that regard.
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New England has plenty of offense with their investment in free agency. Jonnu Smith, Hunter Henry, Kendrick Bourne, and Nelson Agholor joined the team in free agency. The team also added Trent Brown, the New England left tackle when they won the Super Bowl in 2019. However, it’s likely he heads back to the right tackle spot in New England and allows Michael Onwenu to take over left guard from Joe Thuney.
That’s an excellent offensive line to protect Mac Jones with, and some good firepower overall, compared to where they were last year. It makes sense in that regard.
Washington Football Team
Washington is in an interesting scenario with their quarterback play. They made the playoffs by virtue of winning the NFC East last year with Alex Smith at quarterback, who was only marginally better than Carson Wentz in 2020. The team signed Ryan Fitzpatrick in free agency and extended Taylor Heinecke. That’s a combination that should last them in 2021, but beyond that is uncertain. The team doesn’t have a long-term answer at signal-caller.
Perhaps Mac Jones could fill that void?
Chicago Bears
Honestly, I have no idea what the Bears are doing at quarterback. They keep throwing offers at Seattle for Russell Wilson, but so far, Seattle isn’t budging (understandably so). Bringing Trubisky back doesn’t make a ton of sense. Andy Dalton certainly isn’t their quarterback of the future.
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The Bears could protect Jones in their scheme, similar to how they handled Trubisky at the end of this season. Trubisky finished the season with a completed air yards per completion of just 5.3, good for 29th among all quarterbacks with a minimum of 100 attempts. He’s been one of the league’s worst deep-ball throwers since he entered the league, so Matt Nagy converted most of his offense into shorter, easier throws for Trubisky to throw to.
With Allen Robinson, Darnell Mooney, and potentially more rookies to throw to, Jones would have plenty of weapons.
Atlanta Falcons
The draft floor for Mac Jones’ landing spots, I’m considering Atlanta here with their second-round pick and not fourth overall. While PFN Insider Benjamin Allbright has been all but declaring Trey Lance is the lock for Atlanta at fourth overall, we all know the NFL Draft can be unpredictable. If they go Penei Sewell at fourth overall, Mac Jones could be in consideration at 35th.
Mac would benefit from playing with Julio Jones and Calvin Ridley with Arthur Smith’s heavy play-action scheme.
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