Mac Jones’ arm talent ranked the worst in NFL among QBs
On Wednesday’s Felger and Mazz, the guys with Paul Perillo from Patriots.com discussed the Ringer ranking of Mac Jones’ arm strength as the worst in the NFL.
Felger: Mazz, What else you got? Mac Jones? His arm strength? You were just reading this to us off the air.
Mazz: From the Ringer, the Ringer rated the quarterbacks overall and in the interest of fairness, Mac Jones is listed 23rd overall. But in the issue of arm strength, he’s dead last. 32 out of 32 in biggest strength accuracy. As long as the throw isn’t too far downfield and Jones doesn’t have to put too much heat on it, he’ll hit the mark nine times out of ten. It’s the trickier passes that Jones has trouble with, especially the ones aimed outside the numbers. But Jones mostly does a good job of avoiding notes throughout and sticking to the ones he knows he can make, which keeps his completion percentage high. So now, as I was reading that, you all know what popped into my head. So, let’s get him to throw 50/50 balls deep down the field on the side. It’s a great plan, right? As I was reading this, I immediately said, “well, this is what Bill O’Brien’s going to do. Bill O’Brien wants to simplify the throws from quick reads, get the ball out, stay between the hashes, because he knows what Jones’ strengths are”. What they did last year was completely ass backwards. That’s sort of a total aside that popped into my head as I read it. But the biggest weakness was arm talent. Listen to this, we’ve seen plenty of quarterbacks put together long and successful careers with average arm strength. They can run and many have been able to add velocity with some mechanical tweaks. The bad news is that Jones has a long way to go before we can consider his arm even average for an NFL starter.
Paul Perillo: I mean, I’ve been with you guys for the two years and I’m not a huge Mac apologist. I think he does have a weak arm for NFL standards. But like Chad Pennington after all the surgeries, you know, when everything floated, he got by because of the anticipation and all that. Do you feel like he has a worse arm than that?
Felger: No, definitely not.
Paul Perillo: I don’t know. He’s gotten better on the defense. They’re describing something that’s one of the worst that you’ve seen.
Felger: So, I thought he threw the ball a little better this preseason. And I’m talking velocity more than last year. Frankly, I don’t care about arm strength.
Paul Perillo: Well, its anticipation, you know, with the arm strength. I do care because he had trouble on that outside the numbers thing. Guys have jumped outs on him and if he’s not pinpoint with them they get in trouble.
Mazz: I’m worried about it because I think it speaks to being able to throw into small windows. Like that’s the part I’m worried about in all seriousness. And look, I don’t know whether you would call it average or not, but I’ll say this, when Matt Corral was picked up and I looked at the video of Corral online, the ball comes out significantly faster than Jones’s. And I’m not telling you Corral has some sort of like great Josh Allen kind of arm, but the ball comes out with more zip like it’s so painfully apparent. And everyone is saying to me that Corral’s arm is pretty good. It’s not great. And I think it’s obvious when you watch it that his ball comes out with zip on it.
