Chris Mason: Worth revisiting Bill Belichick’s own words about Patriots QBs

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — It’s become painfully obvious that Bill Belichick has no plan at quarterback.

After Mac Jones and Bailey Zappe halved first-team reps at practice this week, neither looked ready to play in an abysmal 10-7 loss to the Giants. Jones threw a pair of first half interceptions — he’s still not stepping into throws — and was benched for the fourth time in 11 starts. In relief, Zappe hummed an interception of his own into triple coverage and his nine completions totaled a stunning minus-4 air yards. The Patriots coaches clearly don’t trust the second-year quarterback to throw downfield.

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“I told everybody to be ready to go,” Belichick said after the game, for the umpteenth time this week.

Clearly, nobody was. The Patriots have no answer at the most important position in North American sports, and Belichick has been spinning his wheels all year long. Let’s recap how the Patriots have gotten here.

Belichick opted to cut Brian Hoyer in March and brought Trace McSorely into the mix. He signed Malik Cunnigham as an undrafted free agent, but planned to convert him to wideout. By the end of camp, Jones was the only quarterback left standing; Belichick cut Zappe, Cunningham and McSorely. He was clearly OK with losing any of them to waivers.

It was Jones or bust, and in 2023, that bet has lost so many times that Belichick would be getting fraud alerts on any credit card he was using to place it. Bill O’Brien was supposed to be a savior, but instead, a third offensive coordinator in three years has Jones looking more lost than ever.

Since purging his quarterback room at the end of camp, Belichick scraped the bottom of the barrel seeking additional depth to compete. Belichick claimed Matt Corral, and signed Ian Book and Will Grier, but nobody was able to climb the depth chart. All have been cut.

Perhaps most perplexingly, Belichick signed Cunningham to the active roster in October and had him leapfrog Zappe to serve as the backup quarterback in Las Vegas. After playing six offensive snaps, Cunningham was cut again, re-signed to the practice squad, and says hasn’t practiced at quarterback since. He hasn’t been the beneficiary of any sort of long-term vision.

Ultimately, Belichick has kept Jones as his embattled starter all season, but further muddied the waters with a Thanksgiving week quarterback competition. Ahead of a date with blitz-happy Wink Martindale, Belichick opted to take a bunch of Jones’ practice reps away.

Let’s revisit some of Belichick’s own words, from when he named Tom Brady New England’s starter over Drew Bledsoe in November of 2001. It was the most important decision in franchise history and Belichick made it with conviction.

“I don’t think you can really get two quarterbacks ready,” Belichick said at the time. “I think you can get one ready and that is what we have to do. We have to get one guy ready to play and that is my responsibility to the football team.”

The Patriots had just lost a Sunday Night Football game to the Rams, 24-17, and Belichick pointed to split practice reps as a catalyst for that loss.

“Last week, the way the practice was split up… I don’t think we did a good job of getting our starting quarterback ready last week,” Belichick said. “That is not a commentary on the players, it is a commentary on the coaches. I feel like for us to get our starting quarterback ready, whoever it is, that we need to give that player the majority of the reps and the majority of the looks in practice to get so that when those looks come up in the game then we can expect him to execute it.

“When you divide the tray and split it up too thin, then inevitably you are going to get situations in the game where you look back and say, ‘Well he really didn’t see that in practice and maybe he would have read it a little quicker if he had seen it’ and that is a coaching problem. That is not a playing problem.”