Patriots coach Bill Belichick says he didn’t call a Hail Mary on the disastrous final play of Sunday’s loss because he thought they were too far from the end zone. But Patriots quarterback Mac Jones thinks he could have completed a pass.
The Patriots had the ball at their own 45-yard line on the play that initially started as a run but turned into a lateral that Raiders defensive end Chandler Jones returned for a game-winning touchdown. When Jones was asked on WEEI if it would have been to far to throw, Jones answered, “No.”
“No. I think we obviously had a plan in that situation. You have to think about everything in those situations,” Jones said. “That’s something that [Belichick] did, and that’s his job and he’s done it for a long time, but whatever the play call is, I’m going to run it and do it the best I can. If it was a Hail Mary, it was a Hail Mary. If it was a run, it was a run. That’s what I always tell myself regardless of the situation: What’s my job and how do I do it? And I just try to keep it really simple, hand it off, throw it or run myself. So there are three options I have. I think it’s one of those things we’ve got to learn from to get better, but there are a lot of things that go into it beyond just the throw itself. There are other things that go into it.”
A Hail Mary is always a long shot, and the most likely result would have been that the Patriots didn’t complete it and then went to overtime. That still would have been a better option.
