FOXBOROUGH — It was a curious afternoon for a couple of Bill Belichick’s cornerbacks at Gillette Stadium.
The weirdness began during warmups when JC Jackson wasn’t alongside his teammates. Jack Jones watched some of the team period by himself, standing near the 50-yard line as Jonathan Jones and Myles Bryant manned the boundary spots with the first team. Eventually, Jack Jones rotated in, but Jackson was nowhere to be found.
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When “Crazy Train” blared from the Gillette Stadium speakers and the Patriots took the field, Jackson trotted out with his teammates and was announced as a defensive starter, but when the game began, that wasn’t how things played out.
Shaun Wade was a surprise starter on the boundary for the first time in his career, while Jackson and Jones watched from the sideline. As teammates scrolled through tablets, neither cornerback seemed terribly engaged as they sat for the first two series. When Sam Howell’s Commanders offense got the ball for a third time, Jackson entered the game, but Jones remained on the Patriots sideline.
With a towel draped over his head, Jones slumped next to Chad Ryland as the defense was on the field, and didn’t play the entire first quarter. It was on Washington’s fourth possession with 11:12 remaining in the first half that he finally saw his first snap.
As expected, a surly Belichick was tight-lipped on the situation, saying nobody was benched (as he has every time he’s benched a player this season).
“Everybody played,” Belichick said. “They all played.”
So Jones sitting out the first quarter wasn’t disciplinary?
“We played all the corners,” Belichick replied. “I think we played all the safeties. I think we played everybody on defense.”
There would be no additional clarity coming from the players themselves.
“I’m not talking,” Jackson said when reporters approached his locker.
It was three more words than Jones said, as the second-year cornerback never appeared in the Patriots locker room before leaving the facility. Because Jones and Jackson neglected to talk in the postgame locker room and Belichick didn’t help things, teammates like Jabrill Peppers were put in the awkward position of fielding questions about the cornerbacks starting the game on the bench.
“My department isn’t personnel,” Peppers said. “Whoever is out there, we trust in them. We’ve got a job to do that doesn’t change. As a safety, it’s my job to make sure everybody is on (the same page), communicate well – kind of rally the troops. That’s my focus.”
Jones did hop on social media though, posting an Instagram story of himself driving home and liking a tweet that read: “Yo @presidentjacc you really shoulda just pleaded guilty at this point.” Jones had faced a litany of charges for allegedly bringing two loaded guns to Logan Airport in June, but cut a deal and avoided a trial.
He then decided to tweet a string of messages straight to his 20,000 followers on X.
“Y’all say anything I ain’t gone lie. Have y’all notice I don’t respond to y’all ? Why would I start today?………. I talk to my friends and family and a couple familiar faces.. y’all stay in y’all lane ima stay in mine. @ all them people tagging me in some BS.”
Only Jones knows that it all means, but it’s hard to read any of that as positive. The Athletic’s Jeff Howe eventually reported that Jackson and Jones started the game on the bench due to “recent performance issues.”
On one hand, that makes sense because both cornerbacks allowed touchdowns against the Dolphins the week before. But on the other, sitting them to start the game felt intentional. If Belichick was that much more confident in Wade’s performance, why would he pull him after the second series? Washington had scored three points on their first two drives, so it’s not like he’d been roasted.
There’s no explanation for that. At least not in Foxborough, where unexplained cornerback weirdness is the latest drama in a season full of it.
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