Film study: Alabama’s Mac Jones capped off breakout season in dominant title win

Alabama quarterback Mac Jones completed a prolific season with eye-popping numbers against Ohio State to win the National Championship and should be a first round pick. 

The Alabama Crimson Tide continue to roll through competition as Nick Saban’s dynasty collected their seventh national title in 17 years. Their 52-24 destruction of Ohio State gave them a legitimate claim as the most dominant team in college football history. Their season was as close to statistically perfect as we’ve ever seen.

At the core of that was an insanely proficient offense that featured quarterback Mac Jones, running back Najee Harris, and receivers DeVonta Smith, Jaylen Waddle and John Metchie III. Smith, of course, won the Heisman Trophy, and Harris earned legitimate consideration for his amazing season as well.

All except Metchie could bolt to the NFL since they’re all eligible to make the jump. Jones is the most questionable after he started only 17 games in three seasons. Teams will be concerned about his fast-track to the league even after compiling and amazing 77.4 completion rate, 4,500 yards, 41 touchdowns and just four interceptions in 2020.

Jones saved his most impressive overall stat line for the grandest stage as he completed 36-of-45 passes for 464 yards and five scores. Digging into the performance showed considerable context, just like his performance against Notre Dame did. Both games showed a quick passer who operates at a high level within Steve Sarkisian’s RPO-heavy scheme.

This isn’t an issue at the collegiate level when there’s an insane amount of talent around a quarterback to help finish plays and create clean pockets to buy time in. Jones only took 16 sacks on the season, and was pressured just eight times against a Buckeyes defensive front that rattled Trevor Lawrence. NFL evaluators will dig into how his individual play factored into this explosive offense and how his traits project when the talent around him is less dominant.

A breakout season has Mac Jones projected as a first round pick in the 2021 NFL Draft

I charted his performance all season and found a real NFL skill set to work with. Jones boasts a solid arm, very good deep touch, plus short accuracy, and he trusts his pre-snap reads well. But taking his production at Alabama as any indicator of future success would be foolish.

The context of his production in the playoffs weren’t promising. He threw more passes and touchdowns behind the line of scrimmage than beyond 10 yards, and the Alabama scheme continually created advantageous looks. Jones rarely had to improvise, and though he showed some willingness to break the pocket and find an open man, it’s far from a strength.

That’s not a deal-breaker since many above-average NFL quarterbacks are in the same boat as limited creators outside of designed plays. It simply lowers his stock when compared to the rest of the top 2021 quarterbacks who thrive in chaos. There were other parts of Jones’ reliance on scheme and playmakers that was troublesome, however.

He had just three passes beyond 20 yards all game, and two came in the two minute drills before halftime. Only one of his 30 first-half attempts was in the middle of the field and not a screen pass. And just one of his throws had a defender anywhere near the target.

The positive way of looking at this is simply that Jones executed his role in the offense perfectly. And he mostly did. He had an interceptable pass attempt to Smith on a dig route that Shaun Wade should’ve nabbed before halftime and had an errant short pass that led to a tip drill. Otherwise, Jones threw a catchable ball on a whopping 25-of-30 attempts beyond the line of scrimmage.

23 of his attempts came off play-action, and just one was uncatchable. He was also accurate on seven-of-eight third down passes. However evaluators will note that only two of those attempts traveled beyond the markers, again reinforcing how little he was asked to do.

Execution matters to a good degree. Kyle Shanahan has gravitated towards this type of quarterback, and we can be confident that Sean McVay, Josh McDaniels, Kevin Stefanski and Arthur Smith, to name a few quality offensive minds, enjoy this level of competence. Even as Jones routinely only needed one-read or had a predetermined decision made for him, his mechanics were reliable, he showed progress throughout the season with confidence and has the tools to be a plus passer.

The difficulty lies in just how much will Jones look with lesser personnel and play designs around him. The margin for error was huge at Alabama, with Smith routinely creating several yards of separation and providing a large catch radius. Those windows don’t exist consistently in the NFL and it destroys borderline starters as their confidence is eviscerated.

Matt Nagy, Shanahan, Ron Rivera and Sean Payton are just a few coaches that’ll be looking for a new quarterback this spring, but they’ll know Jones won’t be a plug-and-play starter unless he’s even better than what he showed at Alabama. That expectation isn’t fair, even if we saw Justin Herbert make that leap in Los Angeles and there’s occasionally that great talent that hits their prime away from collegiate limitations.

Seeing four quarterbacks be drafted within the top 15 picks may push Jones up into the first-round. He’s not quite as talented physically as his peers or have the mental reps outside of the scheme to believe he’s an ideal first-round pick but it’s not unreasonable to think he can find success early in his career with a top coach. It’d be better to give Jones a shot as a first-rounder than to take the much less physically gifted Kyle Trask in a later round.

That doesn’t make Jones’ draft decision easy. Getting more experience in college is almost never a bad thing historically, whereas coming to the league with less experience has been a death knell to Mitch Trubisky and DeShone Kizer, for example. At least if Jones does make the jump, he’s striking while the iron is hot.