AFC Notes: Mac Jones, Tua Tagovailoa, Bills, Dolphins, Jets, Patriots

Bills

• The Bills hosted S Tyree Gillespie, CB William Hooper, DB Herb Miller, DB Jonathan Sutherland, DB Arnold Tarpley, and DB Trill Williams for workouts, via Aaron Wilson. Of this group, Buffalo signed Miller to their practice squad. 

Dolphins

• An NFC executive told ESPN’s Jeremy Fowler they think the Dolphins will wait until after the season to open extension talks with QB Tua Tagovailoa. The final year of his deal will be 2024 under the fifth-year option: “You might as well take the full year so you have every available data point before you commit one way or the other.”
• The Miami Dolphins worked seven players including CB Zyon Gilbert, WR Kendall Hinton, CB/WR Jontre Kirklin, CB Greg Mabin, CB Mark Milton, WR James Proche, and WR Freddie Swain, via Aaron Wilson. Of this group, Miami signed Swain to their practice squad. 

Jets

• The Jets worked out defensive backs Kalon Barnes and Tae Hayes, via Aaron Wilson. Both were signed to the practice squad. 

Patriots

Patriots OC Bill O’Brien said some of Mac Jones‘ decisions in Week 4’s loss to the Cowboys were “very uncharacteristic” of him and he’s confident the quarterback will continue improving throughout the season. 

“Some of the decisions that he made were very uncharacteristic of Mac,” O’Brien said, via Mike Reiss of ESPN. “He’s just trying to make a play, he’s wanting to win, he’s very competitive. I think you’ll see a lot of improvement in Mac as we keep moving forward here.”

O’Brien thinks they can do a better job of coaching Jones’ decision-making. 

“Mac is a battler,” O’Brien said. “He is a competitor. When you play quarterback in this league, you have to limit the mistakes and you have to limit the bad games you have, obviously. We have to do a better job of coaching up some things with him. He has to do a better job of making good decisions for us. He knows that. He takes a lot of ownership — you saw that, I think, after the game. He blames himself. The game wasn’t lost because of one guy. The game was lost, on our part, because of how poorly we played and coached in the game… We have a lot of belief in Mac; I think he’ll get back to doing it the way he knows how to do it.”

O’Brien feels things began getting “out of hand” during the second quarter when the Cowboys scored 18 points to go up 28-3 before halftime. 

“You can’t let things get out of hand, and that’s what happened, because we didn’t do a good enough job of stemming the tide and fixing things right away and going back to our fundamentals,” O’Brien said. “You always have to play mentally within yourself. It doesn’t mean that you can’t take calculated risks; it just means that you have to do a really good job of making sure that you understand what we’re trying to do on every play and executing that play to the best of your ability at a high level, and take what the defense gives you. I would say, for the most part, Mac does that. We’re going to work really hard this week to improve some things.”

• The Patriots hosted five players for tryouts including OL Bobby Evans, DL Trysten Hill, G Reginald McKenzie Jr., OLB Elerson Smith, and DE Spencer Waege, via Aaron Wilson.