After former Patriot calls out Mac Jones, here’s what Josh McDaniels said about practice comments

Following the Patriots‘ loss to the Colts on Tuesday, Mac Jones offered an oddly placed criticism of his team (and himself) to the media — noting that practice had not gone well during the week.

“I just think we, starting with me, just the energy was kind of low,” Jones said. “… Not to get into details, but we just didn’t practice well.”

On Tuesday, offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels was asked about Jones’ comments during his media availability.

“I never try to judge one day of practice, or one week of practice, and give it a grade or anything like that,” McDaniels said. “We’re always working to try to do better, and we’re always trying to work to the solution of every problem that the defense presents to us. So I always feel like we can practice better than what we did, because I don’t think I’ve ever been around a perfect practice.”

Regarding Jones, McDaniels said the rookie was likely criticizing himself most of all.

“He’s always very critical of his own performance and encouraging of his teammates,” McDaniels said. “And so he knows that his teammates are going to try to fix the things that they did wrong. He’s not focused on that; he’s focused on himself and how to improve because he knows that if he improves, it’ll help our team.”

In an interview on WEEI, Bill Belichick seemed to agree with Jones’ assessment.

“Just execution, concentration, things that we just didn’t do well enough,” Belichick said. “I mean, it wasn’t one thing, or one person, or whatever, just general level of execution in practice.”

Jones’ comments were not universally well-received. Former Patriots linebacker Ted Johnson suggested Jones might have done Belichick’s bidding by calling out his team.

“I think Bill Belichick wanted the message to go through Mac Jones, call out his players,” Johnson said on NBC10 Boston’s Sports Sunday. “It would be atypical of Bill this year to come down really hard on this team. So, to me, that was some orders from Bill because I can’t imagine Mac Jones going off script like he did, criticizing the team’s energy and their preparation going into this week. When you’re a rookie quarterback, you’re not supposed to say stuff like that.”

Johnson didn’t appreciate Jones’ suggestion that the Patriots were feeling sorry for themselves either.

“About what?” Johnson said. “You just came off a bye week. Is it because you played on a Monday night and then you had to play on a Saturday night? Get over it, boys. It’s ring-chasing time now.”