Thursday Patriots Notebook 6/22: News and Notes
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Some news and notes for this morning:
Tom Curran and Phil Perry recorded their weekly Patriots Podcast on Tuesday, with the episode obviously focusing on the incident last Friday with Jack Jones where the second-year cornerback was arrested for having two guns in his carry on luggage at Logan Airport.
Jones appeared on Tuesday to be arraigned and pleaded ‘Not Guilty’ and now awaits his next court appearance next month on August 18th.
The obvious question is what happens with the Patriots and Jones until the legal process plays out. Perry believes that the fact Jones remains on the roster is notable, as if the team really felt that strongly, he would have been cut by now.
“I think the decision’s already been made,” said Perry. “I think if they wanted to make sure that they were no longer connected to anyone that was connected to guns, in any way shape or form, they would have made the decision on Friday when the news came down.”
Perry also pointed out that the news apparently came out while the club was having a get together for the coaches last Friday night, which likely altered the mood as they were enjoying one final evening together before breaking for the summer.
“It’s my understanding there was a little get-together for the coaches and maybe some family members right around the time that this was happening,” said Perry. “So it would have been really interesting to see the team reaction in the moment when Bill Belichick gets that call if he’s there at sort of a, you know, ‘say good bye for summer’, gathering for everybody on the staff. But they would have made the call right then and there, ‘O.K., well, we can’t have this.'”
“I think they’ve made the decision, ‘We’re going to try to find all the information we can as this process plays out and when then we need to make a decision, we’ll make one.”
“What’s interesting now, Tom [Curran], is they have to make sure that they feel comfortable with him representing their team between now and August 18th because that’s when he’s due back in court.”
Curran initially speculated that the team might potentially put him on the NFI list ahead of camp, which would keep him sidelined. However, he later walked that back and he instead believes that Jones will be out on the field next month.
Again, as it’s been mentioned here a few times, given how the Patriots previously handled former defensive back Alfonzo Dennard a many years ago, who was certainly dealing with a more serious charge than Jones, it would lead you to believe that the former Arizona State standout will be out there.
Dennard was charged with assaulting an officer in Nebraska back in 2012, with that process taking nearly two years to play out until Dennard ultimately served 30 days of jail time in 2014 during the spring of that offseason. And even then, he played that year before an injury ultimately ended his time with the club.
Needless to say, it seems likely that if Bill Belichick believes whatever explanation Jones provided following this incident, Belichick will probably sweep it under the rug and put the focus back on football and preparing for the 2023 season while letting the rest of the legal process simply play out.
At this point, that’s really all they can do. The only real question is what the outcome will be, and there’s simply no way to know until his time in court eventually comes.
Free agent wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins is still pondering his future after visiting with both the Tennessee Titans and New England Patriots in recent weeks, and he made a promise to future teammates on Wednesday on what his effect might be depending on where he ultimately lands.
Hopkins Tweeted, “Whoever’s in my future receiver group. I promise I will make your job easy.”
It’s certainly tough not to salivate over the impact he could have here, and we actually got a bit of an example of that back in 2021.
With N’Keal Harry doing little on the offense, aside from blocking and taking up space, the Patriots offense never reached the potential of how good they could have been during Mac Jones’ rookie season.
Anyone who remembers that year remembers the play where Harry lined up wrong and the rookie quarterback tried to correct him, with Jones eventually snapping the ball and throwing it out of bounds after Harry essentially blew up the play with the miscue.
However, the club made Harry a healthy scratch in their meeting against Jacksonville that season, with Kristian Wilkerson being upgraded from the practice squad and playing against the Jaguars.
The result put a speedy player on the field that Jacksonville’s defense had to pay attention to, and it led to an outing that saw Kendrick Bourne and Jakobi Meyers each have a big day, while Wilkerson himself netted two touchdowns in a 50-10 rout at Gillette Stadium.
And that was just by removing Harry and adding Wilkerson. Imagine adding someone like Hopkins to what’s essentially a pretty good group of players. He would certainly allow some of them to end up in favorable match-ups, which would potentially allow them to be much more productive.
Whether or not it happens obviously remains to be seen, but if it does, it’s hard not to get a little excited about the possibilities.
The Patriots coach sat down a few weeks ago for an interview with the 33rd Team and was incredibly candid on a variety of topics, with the entire interview being terrific to watch.
One question he was asked pertained to who he’d like to coach against, and Belichick flipped it to who he’d like to coach with, and he brought up names like Paul Brown, and George Halas, with Brown being a guy who he said would have been special.
“I don’t know about coach against, how about coaching with?,” said Belichick. “So, you know, put Paul Brown at the top of the list. I would love to, even though I was able to spend some time around coach Brown, both at Cleveland when I was really young and then at Cincinnati when I was a teenager and we went to their summer camps and stuff, I would have loved to have done that.”
Belichick went on to praise Bill Parcells, saying coaching for him “had a huge impact” on both his life and his career, and also said that coaching against some of the greatest coaches of this era was pretty special.
He brought up names like Al Davis, who Belichick said “really was” a coach at the time, along with Joe Gibbs, Tom Landry, Bill Walsh, Mike Shanahan, Bill Cowher, Marty Schottenheimer, and Jimmy Johnson, among others.
“When I think back about how much I learned in preparing for them, and getting ready to play them, they had a lot to do with making me work harder and be better,” said Belichick of those coaching greats.
The overall interview is about 20 minutes long and while there will be more shared in this space over the next couple of days, it’s definitely worth checking out if you haven’t seen it.
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