PHOTO: AP Photo/Elise Amendola



I think we can all agree the Patriots have their quarterback of the future.

Many fans were still on the fence about the first round draft pick, but Jones should have put any questions you may have had about his ability to lead to bed on Sunday night after going toe-to-toe with Tom Brady in the most hyped regular season game in North American sports history.

The Patriots lost to Brady and the Bucs 19-17, but it wasn’t because of Jones, quite the opposite in fact. Jones had better numbers than Brady and put his team in position to win the game with 59 seconds left. If Nick Folk bangs home the 56-yard field goal, the kid is being crowned the new GOAT already.

The biggest compliment a veteran player can pay a rookie quarterback is to say he’s just “one of the guys” and that’s exactly what Devin McCourty said following the loss.

“I think the best thing about it, is we’re not thinking about it,” he said. “We’re not worried about the kid. He’s been preparing, I mean, the guy’s in here late, he’s in here early every day. He’s one of the guys now. We don’t see him as a rookie now, honestly, we expect him to lead, we expect him to be our quarterback. I think that speaks volumes about how far he’s grown.”

Jones – as he has been after each game – was hard on himself, but did allow for the fact that the offense took some big steps on Sunday night.

“I think we moved in the right direction,” he said. “You know, we made plays and played hard the whole game and I turned the ball over. That’s one of the problems, you know, turnovers can kill you, and you know if you turn the ball over – If you don’t turn the ball over, you have a 90-something percent chance to win, and it’s just statistics but I have thought we moved the ball, passing well and the run game needs to improve and we’ll come up with ways to do that. I thought everyone fought really hard. It sucks we lost but yeah, look at it, like you said, that we’re making some progress.”

After saying he hadn’t seen much of Jones earlier in the week, Brady gave the kid his props too and they shared a brief moment postgame as well.

“Got a chance to congratulate him on the win and he’s a great quarterback,” said Jones. “He played well tonight and that’s pretty much all there was to it.”

“He did a great job,” Brady said of Jones. “I think that offense does a great job. Josh really dialed up some good plays, too. They kind of hit everything. I saw them coming in couple reverse passes and throwback. They did a good job.”

Josh of course is Josh McDaniels, who had arguably his best night in a long time with some of the creativity with his play calling. Jones and McDaniels appeared to be in a nice rhythm several times.

“I think Josh did a great job this week preparing everybody for what we wanted to do and how we wanted to attack the game,” said Jones. “You know, I think we executed well. Well, obviously not good enough to win, but Josh did a great job and I think it was good for us to learn that we didn’t put it all together but we got close to putting it all together and playing a full game together. When we can do that, I think positive things will happen. We didn’t; we can be 90 percent or 85 percent and you lose. We don’t really do moral victories. Those are always forgotten. But you just kind of have to take it for what it’s worth and move on.”

The Patriots are 1-3 but it’s not because of their rookie quarterback. If McDaniels can remain creative, the offensive line can figure things out and Jones can continue making huge strides early on like he did Sunday night in an extremely high pressure situation, then the sky could be the limit.

“I think just coming in and learning from a lot of the older guys, I have a long way to go, and I just try to put my best foot forward every day, and we all want to win,” Jones said. “So, it sucks right now, but I think we have to take it for a positive and just trust our leaders.

“We have great leadership on the team, and I can do a better job in practice just being vocal, getting everybody going and I think we made strides but we just have to listen to our leaders and not lose hope. We have a long season ahead and there’s a lot of work to do and we have a lot of progress to make, so we will.”