Media obsesses over 49ers QB Mac Jones for one good half of football

Pressed into a starting role while 49ers signal-caller Brock Purdy sits out with a turf toe injury, fill-in quarterback Mac Jones completed 26 of his 39 pass attempts for 279 yards and three touchdowns in a 26-21 Niners win Sunday. The effort helped San Francisco start the season 2-0, but maybe more interestingly, it allowed NFL media pundits to dive head first into a dream “what if” storyline after the 49ers passed on Jones with the No. 3 pick in the 2021 NFL Draft in favor of Trey Lance.

Basically everyone went with the same “parallel universe,” “destiny” and “a day that had been four-plus years in the making” spiel, from national outlets like the Ringer, CBS Sports and the Athletic to local outlets like the San Francisco Chronicle, Bay Area News Group and the San Francisco Standard. (The Chronicle and SFGATE are both owned by Hearst but have separate newsrooms.)

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“And now we can see why the 49ers head coach was so enamored of Jones before the 2021 NFL draft,” the Ringer proclaimed.

“Trey who?” read a Chronicle headline.

“On Sunday, Jones looked more like Alabama Mac,” CBS Sports wrote.

The Standard went so far as to compare Purdy and Jones to Joe Montana and Steve Young — the last pair in the NFL to start a season by winning two road games splitting the starting QB honors in 1988. (That 1988 team went on to win the Super Bowl.)

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The Jones love affair, though, featured a fair number of career omissions. Yes, Lance made only four starts for San Francisco before an injury and Brock Purdy’s emergence derailed the North Dakota State prospect’s career. (Lance is now a backup for the Chargers.) But Jones had his own struggles after being taken No. 15 by the Patriots. He earned a Pro Bowl nod and a playoff start after a strong rookie season but struggled mightily in New England over the next two seasons and was traded to Jacksonville before the 2024 season to become a backup.

And while Jones was good on Sunday for a little more than a half of football, it came against a Saints team that entered the season considered by some as the worst team in the NFL and a New Orleans defense that allowed the third-most yards of any team last year. Pro Football Focus notably wasn’t all that impressed with Jones’ game, giving him a 58.6 grade out of 100 — ranking him 27th out of the 34 quarterbacks who have tallied at least 40 snaps so far this season.

There’s a chance Purdy is healthy enough to start in Week 3, a pivotal division showdown against an Arizona Cardinals team that is also 2-0. But as the Athletic’s Matt Barrows wrote, “The 49ers don’t seem inclined to rush Purdy back, in part because they have so much faith in Jones.”

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That faith looks good after one game. But the real question will be how long it lasts.

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