Predicting a full stat-line for Mac Jones heading into 2022 season

Mac Jones was by far the best rookie quarterback in the league in 2021. What kind of numbers can he reasonably put up in the 2022 season?

Mac Jones came into a very good situation for the 2021 season.  After beating out Cam Newton over the offseason, the franchise effectively handed him the keys, and the Jones’ era is firmly underway.

His 2021 season was nothing short of excellent.  Sure, he didn’t blow up the stat sheet, but virtually no rookie quarterback does. Completing over 67% of his passes and winning 10 games would be a remarkable season for a ton of veteran, franchise signal callers.

Now in year two, the Patriots are surely looking for Mac Jones to take that leap into a more relevant tier.  He finished the season perhaps somewhere around QB20 in terms of overall rankings, and I don’t think it’s out of the question to see Jones creep into that Matt Ryan/Ryan Tannehill/Kirk Cousins tier of good-very good.

Jones has all the tools–he’s intelligent, a workhorse, has a plenty strong enough arm and enough mobility to “make it” as a franchise quarterback in the NFL.

I don’t have a specific formula for this, but I want to go ahead and try and predict Mac Jones’ full stat-line for 2022, besides team wins and losses.

To start this, I want to look at the year two jump that a couple younger quarterbacks made.

To keep this simple, I’ll do it like this.

From year one to year two, Joe Burrow’s touchdown percentage went from 3.2% to 6.5%.

From year one to year two, Kyler Murray’s touchdown percentage jumped from 3.7% to 4.7%.

The touchdown percentage statistic is from Pro Football Reference.  The percentage identifies the number of passing attempts that go for touchdowns.

Let’s add one more.  From year one to year two, Justin Herbert’s touchdown percentage jumped from 5.2% to 5.7%.

Mac Jones had a 4.2% touchdown percentage in 2022.

Joe Burrow’s touchdown percentage from year one to year two increased by 3.3%, Kyler Murray’s increased by 1.0%, and Justin Herbert’s increased by .5%.

So if we average those three numbers, we get 1.6%.  A 1.6% increase would bring Mac Jones’ touchdown percentage in 2022 up to 5.8% from 4.2%.

Given that the team is set to play in a similar offense, even with the departure of Josh McDaniels, and given that the offense is mostly identical from year one to year two, I don’t anticipate the Patriots’ offense deviating from what they did last year.

So we could realistically keep his 67.6% completion percentage where it is in 2022.

Now, the same way we figured the touchdown rate percentage is the same way we’d figure out the interception rate.  Using the same three quarterbacks, Burrow, Murray, and Herbert, we’d get an increase of .67%.

This means that Kyler Murray, Joe Burrow, and Justin Herbert’s interception rates jumped an average of .67% from year one to year two.

If we simply add that to Mac Jones 2021 interception rate of 2.5%, we’d get 3.2%.

For the passing yards, Mac Jones’ passes gained an average of 10.8 yards in 2021.

Again, for the passing yards prediction, we can use the same method that we used to find his new interception rate and touchdown rate.

Joe Burrow’s yards per completion jumped 2.4 yards from year one to year two, Kyler Murray’s yards gained per completion actually dropped by .1 yards, and Justin Herbert’s yards gained per completion jumped .4 yards from year one to year two.

That’s an average jump of .9 yards per completion from year one to year two.

Mac Jones gained 10.8 yards per completion in year one, so adding .9 to that is a new yards per completion of 11.7 yards.

Ok, so now we can figure out the actual statistical predictions.

Mac Jones’ projected 5.8% touchdown percentage, given the same attempts of 521 that he had in 2021 would be 30.21, or 30 touchdown passes.

The same method for interceptions would be 16.67, or 17 interceptions.

Passing yards are calculated using his completions.  If he has the same completions in 2022, he’d then have 4,118 yards.

Putting this together, we’d project that Mac Jones completes 67.6% of his passes for 30 touchdown passes, 17 interceptions, and 4118 yards.

The one problem that I do have with this projection are the interceptions.  I don’t think Mac Jones is going to throw 17 interceptions.  In fact, I’d bet that his interception total is somewhere around 10-12.

Mac Jones showed great poise and decision making in 2021.  It’s a safe bet to think Jones will take a leap in 2022.