Mac Jones Has 'Lost 80% of the Locker Room'? What's That Say About Bill Belichick and New England Patriots 'Character'?
In an ideal football world, when a reporter attempts to "take a survey'' of a locker room in an attempt to find out its collected thoughts on a teammate, the locker room collectively declines to comment.
Or maybe even tells the reporter - even though he's doing his job - to "Bleep off!''
Suffice to say, the New England Patriots locker room has slipped far south of "an ideal football world.''
Enter Andrew Callahan of the Boston Herald, at here to report that "at least 80 percent of the Patriots' locker room is out on Mac Jones'' ... and that "the vast majority'' of players are "done with him.''
This is damning stuff - and not just because of what it says about Jones, a Pro Bowler as a first-round rookie three years ago who now is stumbling along while completing 65.4 percent of his passes for 2,031 yards with 10 touchdowns and 10 interceptions while too often being pulled from games over course of this dismal 2-8 season.
Mac Jones and Bill Belichick
Cred: New York Post Images
What else does this story really say? Yes, Callahan's report - which by the way quotes two sources as opposed to, as near as we can tell, actually taking the pulse of 50 or so men - creates an almost untenable situation for Jones, with the paper writing that "the lack of belief spreads to both sides of the ball, with a shared sense that Jones’ worst mistakes negate the best efforts of his teammates.''
But this is also a character check for those players on "both sides of the ball,'' who on a truly bonded and well-led team would not allow such thoughts to become public ... if they even allowed such thoughts to be harbored at all.
And one more thing, as we'll repeat the phrase "well-led.'' Once upon a time, a Bill Belichick-coached team would in theory be all about the motto "Do Your Job.''
But now? Belichick himself isn't even following his own motto. So modeling that, why should anybody else at Patriots HQ do so?
