I was out at New England’s OTAs last week, and if you dropped in there from Mars and I asked you who the first quarterback was, I don’t think you’d have much problem figuring it out. Jones was taking snaps from starting center David Andrews during early walkthrough periods. He was with the first group in just about every drill. He was with the monied skill-players during seven-on-seven work. I’m told, additionally, that’s really the way it’s been throughout the offseason program.
So what does it mean?
I don’t think Jones is entrenched the way, say, Patrick Mahomes is in Kansas City or Josh Allen is in Buffalo, or even his draft classmate Trevor Lawrence is in Jacksonville. That said, where Bill Belichick has left the door open for a competition with his words, the coaching staff’s actions will tell you that the path to Bailey Zappe winning the job is very, very narrow—mostly in that it looks like he’ll have fewer opportunities than Jones, which means Zappe will have to absolutely crush it with those opportunities to create a real summer QB derby.
Both players, for what it’s worth, have been in the building daily, starting in the 6 a.m. hour and regularly staying through dinner time. But this is very clearly Jones’s job to lose.
And while we’re there, the other thing that’s obvious is the impact new coordinator Bill O’Brien is having on Jones and the offense. The Patriots practice I saw (which again, I’ve heard mirrors the ones closed to the media), moved efficiently, with the offense looking crisp and put together and Jones clearly looking like the team’s best quarterback. I’d say that clarity and consistency give everyone a chance to bounce back, and the team to get a cleaner assessment on its 2021 first-rounder at the game’s most important position.
As for any lingering issues between Jones and Belichick, it was far harder to ascertain whether the needle’s moved much on that relationship at all. There was no come-to-Jesus meeting at the end of the last season on how everything came undone, and my understanding is Jones has spent his time with O’Brien, with Belichick mostly delegating all things offense to his new/old coordinator, in a siloed-off model that feels, to those there, much more like how things were when Josh McDaniels was around a couple of years ago.
