Saints to get a glimpse of what could have been when facing Mac Jones
The 2021 NFL Draft was nearly six months ago but we’re going to take a trip back in time because of the New Orleans Saints‘ matchup this weekend. NOLA is squaring off against the Patriots, who took Mac Jones with the 15th overall pick.
Why is this relevant, you ask?
Well, for those of you who closely followed the Saints’ draft, you’ll know that this team was interested in drafting Jones. Nathan Beighle of Who Dat Dish wrote about this while it was happening and took a quote from Mike Lombardi discussing the situation in that article.
As we all know, the Saints didn’t jump up to grab Jones. He went to New England at pick No. 15 and is entering his third NFL game, which will come against a team who was interested in trading up to draft him.
New Orleans probably could have benefitted from drafting a quarterback in the first round but they didn’t pull the trigger to trade up for one. They went with defensive end Payton Turner later on in round one, which surprised a lot of people, to say the least.
Saints were interested in Mac Jones and will see what they’re missing out on
To this point, Jones has thrown for 467 yards and one touchdown through his first two games. He hasn’t been magnificent by any stretch of the imagination but he hasn’t cost his team yet, which is huge from a rookie quarterback.
It’ll be interesting watching Jones because we’ll all be thinking about what could have been when he takes the field on Sunday. If Jones outplays Jameis Winston, this game could end up being quite painful for Saints fans.
If that does end up happening, just keep in mind that we still know very little about Jones and what kind of pro quarterback he’ll be. Maybe he pans out for the Patriots but even if he does, there’s no way of knowing if he’d have been the quarterback NOLA needed following Drew Brees’ retirement.
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Still, I’m excited to see Jones in action but I won’t lie — I’ll be thinking about what things could be like had New Orleans made the move to trade up and draft the guy.