THE DROP-BACK: Wednesday September 29 - Mac isn't biting

patriots

Tom Brady's return to New England is being drilled into our heads this week (I'm already sick of it), but I'm going to talk about the other quarterback in this situation: Patriots rookie Mac Jones. It has to be somehow harder on him than us to constantly hear about Brady's return while he's the new guy just trying to get through his first rodeo. Jones, however, is turning his focus on correcting last week's mistakes. "I think just fixing the corrections from the game we just played is obviously really important and then moving on with the game plan for this week. It will definitely be exciting. Tampa Bay is a great team, and it's a new week. We're excited, and the only thing we can do is focus on each day, and then when Sunday comes, we'll just go out there and play as hard as we can." I hope Jones doesn't turn on ESPN this week.

texans

Houston Texans rookie quarterback Davis Mills made his first NFL start last week because of an injury to starter Tyrod Taylor. Because he didn't get a lot of time to prepare for the start, we should assume the team should take off the training wheels a little bit, and we should expect him to do more in his second start in Week Four. Head coach David Culley explains: "Well, he's going to have a lot more put on him than we put on him last week. I feel like he'll be able to handle that. We're just going to run our offense and let him handle it from there."

Washington

With Ryan Fitzpatrick still out for the Washington Football Team, it's up to quarterback Taylor Heinicke to take the reins. But head coach Ron Rivera wants him to rein it in just a smidge. "When Taylor manages things and doesn't force things, you can see him move the ball for us. But when he tries to do more than he needs to, bad things seem to happen." The good news? They have the Atlanta Falcons next week, so they have a chance to work out those kinks.