Mac Acknowledged He Needs To Improve His Arm Strength.

The biggest knock on Mac Jones coming into the NFL was his arm strength. It was the reason why many people capped his ceiling. Jones played throughout 2021 and it was clear his arm strength wasn't up to snuff. Some fans wondered if that was why Nelson Agholor had half the targets of Jakobi Meyers.

A name familiar to the Patriots, Mr. Tom House who also worked with Andrew Luck recently spoke about Mac Jones with NBC Boston. House went into specifics about "running backwards," and throwing various weighted baseballs. 

House also said "I don't know the farthest that Mac has ever thrown a football, but I guarantee you we can train him to do it. We can repattern and retrain his delivery to handle consistent 60-yard throws if necessary.

A 60-yard pass isn't completed very often in the NFL. But if Mac was to train to do it, I could look Coach Belichick in the face and say, 'If you need him to throw five 60-yarders this game, he can do it for you.' But Mac would need to go through a retraining."

When many fans including myself heard this, it got us excited. We could imagine how dangerous Mac would be if teams had to worry about his deep ball. Then it hit many of us like a ton of bricks, are the Patriots and Mac even worried about his arm strength?

Mac spoke with Randy Moss and he talked about laying off the ice cream and fixing his diet but that wasn't all.

Mac Jones Said “I think this offseason will be a big part of it. Just getting stronger and cleaning up on my diet and all that. So, there’s a lot that going to go into it before next season even starts. That’s the important part, is attacking that. And then hopefully a lot of big changes will come with – whether it’s mechanics or the playbook, and I’ll have a lot of time now to kind of digest everything and take it over how I want to do it.”

Mac Jones acknowledges he needs to get stronger. So he knows he has to improve his arm to prolong his NFL career. That gives hope but one must also wonder if his teammates were responsible in anyway for bringing it to his attention. 

There are many fans who thought the 2021 offense was built for Cam Newton. Running the ball and only throwing 30+ yard passes. For those fans, Mac Jones's lack of arm strength had to be as bad as watching 20 years of Tom Brady. The good news is, anyone who watched the pro bowl got to see Mac Jones's speed.

Mac Jones has deceptive speed. He's not gonna run a lot of designed runs but the Patriots need to encourage Mac that if there's space, to run and slide. He's got enough speed to make teams pay for not having a spy for if he gets out of the pocket or has a hole open in front of him.

While the pro bowl sucked, especially for not being in Hawaii, which is traditional. Seeing what Mac was capable of and hearing what he had to say to Randy Moss definitely made the pro bowl worth watching. Not to mention he got some development training from another coaching staff and could pick the minds of the other players on how to improve.

Mac Jones should be more dangerous in 2022 if the coordinator allows and that has to make Patriots fans happy. And opposing teams and their fanbases nervous. Patriots nation, we're on to the the free agency period.

Writer's note: Be sure to check out my seven position blogs on draft prospects. I even included three bonus weapons that could greatly improve the Patriots roster.