Gasper: I think there’s some Mac Jones PTSD with Patriots fans
Chris Gasper of The Boston Globe joined the Felger and Mazz program on Friday and hit on the latest with the New England Patriots. Gasper believes that some Patriots fans may have “Mac Jones PTSD” when it comes to the Patriots selecting a quarterback in the first round of the NFL Draft.
Is there a little “Mac Jones PTSD” with Patriots fans?
Chris Gasper: Yeah, I think there’s some “Mac Jones PTSD” involved in what I’m hearing a little bit in terms of people being like, “don’t draft a quarterback that high. Trade down, take a 11 and 23 from the Vikings”. I think people are looking at that Mac Jones situation and they are scared. There’s some trepidation there. It’s like, “well what if you get it wrong? You know what if you get it wrong again?” But the reality is that in order to replace a franchise quarterback you have to take swings. And we’ve seen this with teams. Like how long did it take the Bills? You know there was J.P. Losman and Rob Johnson in there for the Bills. And EJ Manuel before they landed Josh Allen. So, you have to take some swings. If you’re not willing to take the bat off your shoulders and take a swing at a franchise quarterback, then you’re not really going to get one. You can try and build it the Shanahan way or what they’ve done in Detroit, but you better be darn good at drafting to be able to do that. And that takes a little longer. The fastest way to get better is to bring in a franchise quarterback. And I actually think overall with Drake Maye, from what I’m hearing now from some people like Daniel Jeremiah, Chase Daniel, I know that Tim Hasselbeck was on somebody’s podcast the other day talking up Drake Maye, now I feel like the pendulum is going back the other way. Like people are kind of like, “oh, we dumped on Drake Maye too much”, and now they’re sort of starting to talk him up again. So I think this is what you get during the draft cycle.
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Mock Draft Mailbag 1.0: It's officially draft season
With the initial wave of NFL free agency in the books, it’s officially NFL Draft season. As of Monday, it’s 38 days until the first round of the 2024 NFL Draft begins on April 25.
Now that the draft is the next major even on the NFL calendar, every Monday from today through draft week will be Mock Draft Monday here on 985TheSportsHub.com, powered by U.S. Pavement. We’ll have some sort of mock draft content to start the week, each week.
READ MORE:
—Patriots free agency tracker
—Top quotes from the final episode of The Dynasty
—Zolak: Patriots should consider trading down
To kick off Mock Draft Mondays this week, we’ve got the return of the Mock Draft Mailbag! For those who missed its debut last year, this is like the Patriots Mailbag we do during the regular season but instead of sending questions, people submit mock drafts for me to react to. I see you guys replying to my tweets with mock drafts all year an unfortunately can’t respond to them all, so this is my attempt to get to as many as I can.
As we go through, there may be picks or trades that overlap from mock to mock. I’ll comment on a player, pick, trade, etc. the first time it comes up, but know that comment carries over to other mocks that present the same situation even if I don’t highlight it again. The goal is to try to highlight as many players and scenarios as possible, using part of as many possible mock drafts as you guys sent in.
If you missed submitting a mock this week, don’t worry! There will be at least two more Mock Draft Mailbags later this spring. For now though, let’s get started with 2024 Mock Draft Mailbag 1.0!
Note: The way these tweets are displayed, some of the mocks are cropped. You’ll have to open them in Twitter to see the full draft.