Until this weekend, New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick had been reluctant to firmly express confidence in starting quarterback Mac Jones. And one NFL insider has a wild theory about why Belichick may have done that.
NFL insider Ian Rapoport of The NFL Network revealed that he thinks Belichick was non-commital about the future of Mac Jones to fool other teams ahead of the draft.
“I spent three years covering the New England Patriots and I feel like I speak Belichick maybe as well as anyone,” Rapoport said. “Him saying Mac Jones, absolutely that he has the confidence in him – that was really telling. Look, Belichick has not committed to Mac Jones over the last couple of months. My read – and this is just a read on this thing – is he wanted to let people wonder was he going to take a quarterback in the draft.”
“They were never taking Will Levis, but they brought him into the facility for a visit. Maybe they wanted another team to jump over them if they wanted Levis. Maybe they wanted another team in the second round to jump over them if they wanted a quarterback,” Rapoport said. “I think Bill Belichick liked the advantage of keeping teams guess, and only after it was clear that they weren’t taking a quarterback early did they say ‘yeah, Mac [Jones] is our guy.'”
It’s certainly a bold claim, and the NFL world had plenty to say about it on Twitter – with many people not exactly believing Rapoport’s speculation.
https://twitter.com/kjhogo/status/1652378649599901698?s=20
It’s certainly an interesting theory from Rapoport.
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