Part One: Compelling reasons why the Chicago Bears need Mac Jones

Mac Jones should be the Chicago Bears target if drafting a quarterback

My brother, who watches hours and hours of college football, clued me into Mac Jones about six months ago. My brother lives near Boston so he is immersed in the nuances of Patriot football. He gave the Alabama quarterback the nickname “Mac Brady” because he reminded him of Tom Brady.

Back in September, I started to pay close attention to Mac Jones. It did not take long before I was convinced he had the potential to be a great quarterback. Then he went and proved this assessment was as accurate as any one of his best passes by playing big in the big college games.

My brother also got me to look closely at Patrick Mahomes back in 2017. It was the quarterback lessons I learned from McMahon that enabled me to zero in on Patrick Mahomes as the best target for the Bears in the 2017 draft.

On draft day in 2017, my brother and I lost our minds when the Chicago Bears did not draft him. The thing about Mahomes is he was remarkably accurate with his deep ball. This is something Mahomes and Mac Jones have in common.

Accuracy with the deep ball is a huge value a quarterback can give a team. A big reason for this is that chunk plays can often be the difference between a win or a loss given that there is so much parity in the NFL.

However, the biggest factor in my choice of Mahomes as the best quarterback in his draft was based on a trait he shares with Jim McMahon and other great quarterbacks. The hardest intangible to find in a quarterback is charisma. If all else is equal take the guy with charisma. Not only did Mahomes show he was accurate and a good decision maker with a bazooka for an arm but he also had off-the-charts charisma.

Patrick Mahomes’ level of on-field charisma is comparable to Joe Namath, who possibly was the most charismatic QB of all time. A great quarterback is expected to make the players around him better. Being charismatic greatly enhances this quality.

Tom Brady ranks very high on the charisma scale and as a result, one of his biggest pluses is how much he elevates his teammates’ performances. Charisma in a quarterback creates energy in teammates that results in a positive mindset even if a team is going through a rough patch. A charismatic QB not only energizes his guys on offense but it can do the same to the guys on defense. The main point of all this is that Mac Jones has charisma, as well.

Getting back to Mahomes, in spite of having traits that make quarterbacks great, the geniuses in the NFL let Mahomes slide to number 10 in the draft. Those that misread the potential of Patrick Mahomes probably blew it for this reason. They got hung up on factors less important than the quarterback basics when projecting Mahomes as an NFL quarterback.

The main criticisms of Mahomes were his 13-16 win-loss record in college and that no quarterback from the “air raid offense” had ever been successful in the NFL. If these NFL draft experts had stuck to the QB  basics there is no way Mahomes slides to 10th in that draft.

Of course, now he is rightfully considered a generational talent. With Mac Jones, the criticism is that Alabama quarterbacks have not made it big in the NFL, Jones is surrounded by great offensive talent and the current crime of the century for quarterbacks — he is not athletic and only has a good, not great arm.

I understand draft evaluators are under tons of pressure when evaluating quarterbacks. So in analyzing every conceivable detail about a college quarterback they can lose focus on the enormously high value of the quarterback basics. More to come as we dig deep into Mac Jones and the Bears.

Check out Part 2 by clicking here.