Jones chooses to look forward

any of the emotion of what was undoubtedly a very difficult season, sticking with many of the same phrases he’s relied on all season rather than go into any real detail of what he thought went wrong. It felt like a missed opportunity for a generally affable player who has been nothing but a professional since joining the franchise.

“Definitely a lot of learning experiences — I definitely grew as a person, as a player and a person,” Jones said. “It didn’t go the way I wanted, but at the end of the day I know I’m going to bounce back. I have a lot of respect for the people in this locker room, have a lot of close friends on this team, and I’m really just excited for the future.”

The fault lines were evident in what he didn’t say — while he declared his gratitude to the Kraft family, he did not mention Bill Belichick by his full name — all of which points to a looming split. Especially if the Krafts decide to entrust Belichick with the next phase of the rebuild.

“Really just learned to keep going,” Jones said. “I look back and a lot of times I had my best success after my biggest failures. I feel like I can do that again. I’ve worked hard. Did a lot of work this year, in the weight room, all that stuff. So I’ve been impressed with that.”

Specifically, Jones said he put on 7-8 pounds of muscle over the last six weeks, a product, he said, of “getting a chance to work on my own stuff, doing my own things in the weight room, getting stronger all year.

“It’s hard to do that, right? Really hard. When I talk about my notes and things I’ve reviewed, that’s one of the things that went well. So I’ve got to build on that in the offseason and it’ll help me in my next opportunity, wherever it is.”

Wherever it is.

That’s about as close to Jones got to revealing how bad it got here. From the macro stats that proved it (12 interceptions against 10 touchdown passes) to the personal moments that defined it (choking back tears in the press conference after the loss in Germany), Jones disintegrated as the season wore on.

From the coaching malpractice that set it in motion (a porous offensive line, a dearth of weapons around him, assistant coaches who had no business running an offense) to Jones’s inability to pull himself out of it, the precipitous fall mercifully came to rest Sunday, with nowhere lower to go as the season ended.

“Like I said, I feel like I made progress, especially in these last couple weeks,” he said. “I’ve been here early, left late. A lot of people would have just said ‘I’m done and I’m not going to do that,’ and I’ve worked out hard.

“That’s where I’m at now, looking forward to the next opportunity. I know that it’s going to come, but at the end of the day as a quarterback and a competitor, you got to be ready, right? So I’m going to be ready.”

Surely Jones wasn’t ready for yet another demotion Sunday, but Belichick had seen enough, relegating him to emergency third-stringer. Citing Nathan Rourke’s work during the week as reason for reward, the coach wouldn’t even address Jones specifically during his season wrapup call Monday. Instead, he leaned on his trusty “the season is only 24 hours old” crutch to avoid one Jones question and swatted down another well-crafted query about the Jones seesaw of benchings, startings, and demotions by saying, “I wouldn’t characterize it anywhere close to what you have.”

With no follow-up questions allowed during the conference call, Belichick was not pressed on what his characterization would have been.

A year ago, however, in the same spot, on the same call, Belichick said, “Mac has the ability to play quarterback in this league. And we have to all work together to try to find the best way as a football team — which, obviously, quarterback’s an important position — to be more productive than we were this year.”

For Jones, that didn’t happen. And it might never happen again, at least not in New England.