Below you'll find the passing charts from NFL.com of Mac Jones for the two games this season.
There has been a lot of talk about Jones needing to start throwing the ball downfield a bit more in order to stretch-out defenses and loosen things up underneath, and you can see by these two passing charts that there is some merit to those conversations.
In week-1 Jones had 39 pass attempts and only seven of them were thrown further than 10-yards down the field.
Of those seven, only three of them were thrown 20+-yards downfield.
16 of his pass attempts were thrown less than 5-yards downfield, and six attempts weren't thrown beyond the line of scrimmage.
Week-1 Vs the Dolphins
In week-2 it was more of the same, if not even more conservative.
He had 30 attempts and only seven of those attempts were thrown beyond 10-yards downfield. Only two passes were thrown beyond 20-yards downfield.
18 of his 30 attempts were thrown within 5-yards of the line of scrimmage, and eight of his attempts didn't cross the line of scrimmage.
Week-2 Vs the Jets:
Thru 2-games Jones thrown two passes beyond 25-yards and hasn't thrown one beyond 30-yards.
While this may not be out of the norm for a rookie QB, defenses are going to start to sit on these underneath throws and make it a lot tougher for him to find passing windows if he doesn't start to take some shots down-field.
With games coming-up against the Saints, Buc's and Cowboys, it would seem like he will be forced to start taking more chances at chunk plays.
The Saints and Buc's will make it tough for the Patriots to run the football and Jones will have to take some pressure off the running game by loosening up these defenses with downfield throws.
The Cowboys don't have the quality of defense as the other two, but their offense may require Jones to make some down-field plays just to keep-up with the weapons and ability that the Cowboys have on offense.
The fact that Jones hasn't thrown an INT so far is very impressive, but playing so close to the vest is certainly one of the reasons for that. He will have to open-up the offense a bit and still limit the turnovers if wants to have continued success.
fi of Mac Jones for the itwo games this season.rst