Josh McDaniels details what makes Mac Jones so accurate

Mac Jones is on pace to set the rookie record for the highest completion percentage at 70.2%. If he can pull it off, he’ll do so in the wake of logging the highest completion percentage (77.4%) in college football history with a minimum of 200 passes. It would be quite the run.

It’s about more than what he does on paper. The New England Patriots quarterback throws a ball that receivers genuinely seem to like to catch. Kendrick Bourne, for example, said he preferred catching Jones’ passes to that of Jimmy Garoppolo. Both Jaylen Waddle and DeVonta Smith, former teammates with Jones at Alabama, said they preferred him at QB over Tua Tagavailoa. Offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels praised Jones for throwing a catchable ball.

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Here’s what that means.

"Ball placement"

“I think the first thing is the ball placement. Your accuracy and ball placement is something you can work hard to try to improve as a coach. But many times, naturally, a player will have that. That will be their strength or weakness. I would say that Mac came here with that as a very strong point in his game,” McDaniels said Monday.

What does that look like in a game? There are a number of examples, with a handful of Jones’ passes to Hunter Henry coming to mind. The two have a unique connection, where Jones has made a habit of placing the ball in a spot where Henry can make a spectacular play. But then there was also a third-and-9 pass to Jakobi Meyers against the Browns. Meyers made a nice adjustment and a solid catch. Jones’ throw helped highlight Meyers’ separation. It was a beautiful connection.

"Anticipation"

That’s only one element of McDaniels’ breakdown of a catchable ball. So let’s dive into the second piece of the puzzle.

“There’s an anticipation, a hand-eye anticipation, based on how fast the receiver, tight end, back, how fast he’s moving across the formation, how fast he’s moving vertically,” McDaniels said. “Then when you have to let the ball go and when you let it go, what trajectory do you have to let it go at? There’s a lot that goes into that in a short amount of time and Mac has naturally had the ability to lead his receivers, put the ball in a place where they can catch and run in front of them and try to keep it away from the defenders at the same time.”

One example of that anticipation — even if it didn’t result in yards after the catch — was Jones’ touchdown pass to Henry against the Cowboys. Jones threw the ball before Henry had made the break on his route. That was important because Jones needed to sneak the ball underneath the safety, who might have had a jump on the lofted ball if Jones had thrown the ball any later. The result was actually a relatively easy and fairly safe pass that kept the ball and Henry out of harm’s way.

"Awareness"

Yup, there’s a third element.

“I also think he has the awareness,” McDaniels said. “We talk about understanding who you’re throwing it to and how far away they are. Because if you’re talking about a back on a checkdown who’s seven yards in front of you, you don’t need a howitzer to blow his helmet off.

“So, understanding that is a different throw than say the in-cut he rips in there to Kendrick Bourne the other day, where the window’s smaller and we need to get it in there quick because the windows closing. Any quarterback that is an accurate passer, has good ball placement, has an understanding of changing up the pace of his throws and understanding who he’s throwing to and what kind of throw is required in order to make it a successful throw, Mac does a nice job at basically all those things. I think we’ve seen a lot of different types of throws from him during the course of the year.”

Jones’ touch passes (like the ones we saw to both Henry and Meyers) have often been a thing of beauty. The quarterback is also completing 89.3% of his passes to his running backs, with the group dropping just one pass, a sign that Jones is putting the ball in a place that’s easy for them to hold onto the football.

But he’s not babying every ball. In recent weeks, we’ve seen Jones’ most aggressive passes as a pro, including the touchdown pass to Bourne that McDaniels referred to.

Jones managed to split the double coverage by blasting the ball high and in between the cornerback and the safety. It wasn’t an easy ball for Bourne to catch, but the throw was likely to be an incompletion if the receiver didn’t catch it. So Jones trusted Bourne, who made the play for a touchdown.

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