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The New England Patriots shocked the NFL world earlier this week when the team decided to release Cam Newton in favor of starting rookie Mac Jones at quarterback for the 2021 season.
A debate quickly ensued about how Jones would fare with the Patriots’ offense and whether Newton could have played better than last season with a full preseason and training camp under his belt.
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Wolverine Studios, which is the developer behind Draft Day Sports: Pro Football 2021 and the upcoming Draft Day Sports: Pro Football 2022, simulated the season to see who would fare better. The company creates simulation games that allows fans to manage everything about a franchise – from the roster and salary cap to drafting players and free agency.
New England Patriots quarterback Cam Newton (1) passes the ball to Patriots quarterback Mac Jones (10) during a joint NFL football practice with the New York Giants, Thursday, Aug. 26, 2021, in Foxborough, Massachusetts. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)
"Here was our methodology for running the simulations. First we took our simulation engine, Draft Day Sports: Pro Football 2022, which is in our final stages of pre-release testing and used a community-created mod as a starting point," Wolverine Studios president Gary Gorski said.
"From there we modified it so that we had players on the proper teams, adjusted the schedule to match and tried to make everything just right so that we could simulate multiple seasons under the same conditions except who would be the starting quarterback. We also decided to prevent injuries from occurring in the league so we could get a result not impacted by any teams suffering devastating injuries."
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The simulation saw Jones and Newton essentially run a similar passing offense from the 2020 season. The simulation revealed the rookie would be more productive than Newton, averaging more than 4,000 passing yards with an average of 25 touchdowns and 12 interceptions.
"When it came down to the question of Mac Jones or Cam Newton the answer we found was that there probably wasn’t going to be much of a difference this year. In our multitude of simulations run we found that the average wins for both players at the helm was eight wins on the season, a one-game improvement on their 2020 season," Gorski added.
New England Patriots quarterback Mac Jones throws during a joint practice with the Philadelphia Eagles at the Eagles NFL football training camp Tuesday, Aug. 17, 2021, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
"Jones was the more consistent of the duo in our simulations with his record routinely coming in at the 8-9 mark while there was more variance in the Newton simulations with a few 10-win seasons but also more on the lower end of the win total as well. We also didn’t stop at the regular season and found that while playoff appearance totals would likely have a similar percentage chance that Jones was able to lead the team to one playoff victory in roughly 12% of our simulations while Newton was able to score a playoff win less than 8 percent of the time when the team reached the playoffs."
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With Newton at the helm last season, the Patriots only won seven games. Newton also missed a game because he was sidelined with coronavirus.
The 2021 season is set to be a tough one for any team in the AFC East. The division is as stacked as it ever as been and Jones will have to play against some tough up-and-coming quarterbacks.
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