Cold sweats
Afterward, QB plan seen as just smoke and mirrors
For a couple of minutes in the second quarter, it was Zappe Magic and almost felt like 21 years ago when young Tom Brady came out of nowhere and took the quarterback job from Drew Bledsoe.
In the first half of the primetime “Monday Night Football” game against the Bears, Mac Jones was Wally Pipped by Bailey Zappe’s Lou Gehrig (Zappe even wears No. 4). Zappe was Elvis. He was Rudy — with talent.
The fourth-round pick from Western Kentucky came off the bench and directed two TD drives in less than four minutes, rocking Gillette to its foundation, and taking the Patriots from a 10-0 deficit to a 14-10 lead. The golly-gee kid completed 4 of 4 passes for 97 yards. He threw a 30-yard touchdown pass to Jakobi Meyers and a 43-yard bomb to DeVante Parker.
Despite preposterous insistence that the Pats were planning to play two quarterbacks regardless of performance (lie detector machines exploding from Portland to Newport), our local quarterback controversy was in full (not Chaim) Bloom when Jones failed and Zappe succeeded in the first half. In that moment, Zappe officially supplanted last year’s Pro Bowl/playoff rookie, Jones, who came to New England as a first-round QB savior. It looked like the Pats would move to 4-3 and take Zappe Magic into the Meadowlands against the hated Jets this weekend.
But the center would not hold (that was left to left tackle Trent Brown). The heavily-favored Pats could not contain Chicago’s much-maligned running quarterback Justin Fields and dug a hole too deep for Zappe Magic.
At the end, the Patriots were 33-14 losers, Bill Belichick was still tied with Papa Bear Halas (324 wins) for second place on the all-time victory list, and poor Mac was spitting out pieces of his broken luck, wondering what he did to offend the football gods.
“I knew what the plan was,’’ said Jones. “Coach Belichick did a really good job explaining it to me.’’
“This game didn’t go our way,’’ added zombie Zappe. “I got to get better. Can’t fall off like I did.’’
“Poor performance tonight,’’ said Belichick. “We were outcoached, outplayed . . . Obviously, we didn’t coach well. Pick whatever you want.’’
Today the Pats are just another 3-4 football team with two quarterbacks and little chance of a serious playoff run. Chicago was supposed to be a layup. This was supposed to be the soft part of the schedule.
We had controversy all week about who would be New England’s starting quarterback and in the end, Belichick made the wrong decision. He went with his franchise guy who’d been out for four weeks with a high ankle sprain. He went with Jones and Jones delivered bupkis. Jones was gone after three series — two three-and-outs and one interception. And then they tried to tell us that switching QBs was the plan all along. Mercy.
Zappe Fever had gripped our region after the 23-year-old rookie led the Pats to victories over the moribund Lions and Browns in Weeks 5 and 6.
Leading up to Monday, the “Jones or Zappe” question was a Churchillian riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. The topic dominated airwaves and all local football conversation and Belichick did nothing to diminish the drama.
Diabolical Hoodie seemed to enjoy keeping everyone (especially the Bears) in the dark — and a part of us suspects Belichick enjoyed making his second-year, first-round franchise QB think twice about his job security.
Given the paranoid Pats’ reluctance to reveal anything (Q: “Bill, is today Tuesday?” A: “Well, traditionally that’s the day that follows Monday”), speculation runs wild whenever there’s a QB job up for grabs and most of us remember 2001 when sixth-round Tom replaced injured Drew and never returned the torch.
Fueling the irrational fires of a delightful controversy, we had leakage of humble Mac morphing into an entitled diva. Nobody on the team went on record with this charge, but Zappe Fever had a lot of Pats fans buying the smear and wanting to see more Zappe.
Going back to last season, Jones was 2-6 in his last eight starts. He threw five picks and lost a fumble in his first three games of 2022.
Why make a change with Zappe 2-0 as a starter, we wondered?
Why risk Jones reinjuring the ankle on a soggy field? Why not wait until next weekend when the Pats have a tough game on the road against the hated Jets? What would we all say if Belichick made the switch back to Jones, then lost the game, as well as all Zappe momentum?
Former Patriot coach Bill Parcells said it best: “You lose your job for two reasons: 1. You’re not playing well, or 2. Someone else is playing better. If you’re out of the game and someone else goes in and obviously plays better, then you lose your job.’’
Jones went three and out on New England’s first two possessions and fans were chanting “Zappe!, Zappe!” when the Bears lined up for an extra point to take a 10-0 lead with 2:11 left in the first.
When asked about public support for Zappe, Jones said, “I just gotta do better at my job.’’
The Patriots trailed 20-14 at intermission and Belichick told the MNF crew that he would play both of his quarterbacks in the second half. This preposterous notion was floated and promoted by the Pats’ media cartel — that there was some sort of plan to play both QBs.
If you buy that, you probably think the Red Sox are going to spend money moving forward. The only reason Zappe played Monday was because Jones wasn’t taking the offense anywhere. When Zappe was asked, postgame, if he got reps with the first-team offense last week, he deflected the question.
“We had a plan,’’ said Belichick. “I told the quarterbacks, we were going to play both of them.’’
When he was asked if not putting Jones back into the game was performance-related, Belichick said, “That’s not what it was. You can write whatever you want to write.’’
Zappe had a three-and-out to start the third. Meanwhile, the Bears kept gashing New England’s run defense and led 26-14 when Zappe had a third-and-2 pass tipped at the line of scrimmage late in the third.
Down, 33-14, Zappe had one last stand midway through the fourth, but one of his passes was tipped at the line and intercepted by Bears linebacker Roquan Smith.
Yuck. Doug Flutie syndrome. Short guy (Zappe is 6 foot even) gets passes tipped at the line of scrimmage.
With less than three minutes to play Bears corner Kyler Gordon jumped the route and almost had a Pick-6.
No joy in mudville. Zappe Days are not here again.