2021 NFL Draft: Alabama QB Mac Jones making a lot of noise

Alabama QB Mac Jones is making some noise in the 2021 NFL Draft discussion.

The 2021 NFL Draft quarterback discussion has revolved largely around Clemson’s Trevor Lawrence, Ohio State’s Justin Fields, and North Dakota State’s Trey Lance.

In the early goings of the 2020 season, Florida’s Kyle Trask and BYU’s Zach Wilson have also jumped into the discussion. One player who is not being talked about enough at this point is Alabama’s Mac Jones, the guy taking over for the 2020 fifth overall pick Tua Tagovailoa.

Tagovailoa was so good while he was at Alabama, that it seems almost anyone and everyone had substantially lower expectations for Jones than they should have.

Jones wasn’t considered even a guy to keep on the 2021 NFL Draft radar going into this season, mainly because of how good the top three guys in the class are and because it was probably expected almost universally that Jones would have to put together a much larger sample than he has in order to gain legitimate NFL credibility.

He’s been doing that in a big way so far in 2020.

Despite losing Jerry Jeudy and Henry Ruggs III to the NFL, Jones is doing just fine with DeVonta Smith and Jaylen Waddle, though Waddle has just gone down for the remainder of the 2020 season with an ankle injury.

Jones is showing playmaking ability on third down, and he’s not just dinking and dunking the Crimson Tide offense down the field.

The best deep-ball thrower in college football? That is exceptionally high praise from Jim Nagy, the executive director of the Senior Bowl, and an excellent talent evaluator.

Essentially, Mac Jones has played lights out through the first handful of games to open the season. He’s connecting on deep shots, making plays on third down, and keeping the Alabama offense humming with Tua Tagovailoa gone.

What does this mean for his 2021 NFL Draft stock?

If he can keep it up, it’s only going to get higher. Quarterbacks are often over-valued because there’s almost always a scarcity of talented signal-callers in the NFL, but we watched Joe Burrow in 2019 go from people thinking he might have a shot at the first or second round to being the unquestioned number one overall pick.

If you can catch fire, you can be rewarded with a very high NFL Draft status.

Jones has put some really nice things on tape even dating back to last year when he was playing in relief of Tagovailoa. If he can play this well consistently in 2020, even with some margin for error, he could easily work his way into the first-round discussion.