Fairly or not, Mac Jones is going to be living in the shadow of everything Tom Brady accomplished for the New England Patriots for the foreseeable future.
No one was expecting Jones to win the first 10 starts of his postseason career, a la Brady, but he won't even be starting out 1-0 following a systematic failure at every level for the Patriots in a 47-17 loss to the Buffalo Bills in the AFC Wild Card Round.
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Jones was far from the worst of New England's troubles -- Buffalo scored a touchdown on each of its first seven drives, after all -- but compared with Brady's postseason debut, his performance was eminently forgettable, even if he did turn in a (slightly) higher passer rating than his predecessor.
Here were the stat lines for the quarterbacks in their first playoff starts:
Jones 24-38, 232 yards, 2 TD, 2 INT, 75.8 passer rating
Brady 32-52, 312 yards, 0 TD, 1 INT, 70.4 passer rating; rushing TD
New England Patriots
Weather was a factor in each game, with a high temperature of 7 degrees at kickoff on Saturday in Orchard Park and a snow globe at Foxboro Stadium on Jan. 19, 2002, but that's about where the similarities end.
Brady completed 10 straight passes at one point in the fourth quarter alone, including one drive in which he was 9 for 9, in an instant classic which included the infamous "Tuck Rule" call on New England's game-tying drive in the fourth quarter.
Kendrick Bourne aside, Jones had basically no help on offense for the Patriots, who compiled an imperfect mess of dropped passes, wrong routes and blown assignments throughout the game. New England was down 27-0 before it could even muster a field goal, and thanks to its defense making a grand total of zero stops, Jones never even had the opportunity to lead the Patriots back.
The book remains wide open on Jones, who figures to have plenty more chances to lead New England on a deep playoff run. But for now, the gap between he and Brady remains as wide as you'd expect it to be.