Mac Jones went from playing in the Pro Bowl as a rookie to having the home crowd chant the name of the backup quarterback during his second season with the New England Patriots. And the biggest change from Year 1 to Year 2 appeared to be in his play-callers.

On Tuesday, the Patriots reportedly addressed that downturn by adding Alabama offensive coordinator Bill O’Brien in that same position on their NFL staff.

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Why would New England fans welcome that report?

The Patriots finished 17th among the 32 NFL teams in points and missed the playoffs in 2022. During O’Brien’s previous three seasons calling plays for New England, the Patriots finished sixth, first and third in the NFL in scoring, won 37 regular-season games and captured the AFC East title annually. But that was with Tom Brady at quarterback.

Can O’Brien have the same type of success with Jones?

After his 13th season as New England’s offensive coordinator, Josh McDaniels left to become the head coach of the Las Vegas Raiders last offseason.

By his own account not big on titles, Patriots coach Bill Belichick didn’t name a new offensive coordinator, but he turned the play-calling duties over to Matt Patricia and the quarterbacks room to Joe Judge, a couple of former NFL head coaches who had boomeranged back to New England.

Patricia had never been an offensive play-caller and Judge had never been a quarterbacks coach before the 2022 season.

Patricia had spent 14 seasons on the Patriots’ staff – the final six as defensive coordinator – before spending three seasons as the head coach of the Detroit Lions. Fired with five games left in the 2020 campaign, Patricia returned to New England in 2021 as a senior football advisor.

After an All-American season for Alabama’s 2020 CFP national championship team, Jones joined the Patriots as the 15th pick of the 2021 NFL Draft and won the starting-quarterback spot over incumbent Cam Newton.

Jones started every game as New England posted a 10-7 record and went to the postseason as a wild-card qualifier in 2021. In 2022, the Patriots went 8-9, with a 6-8 mark in games started by Jones, who missed three games because of an ankle injury.

As a rookie, Jones completed 352-of-521 passes for 3,801 yards with 22 touchdowns and 13 interceptions. In his second season, Jones completed 288-of-442 passes for 2,997 yards with 14 touchdowns and 11 interceptions.

New England dropped from sixth in the NFL in scoring in 2021 to 17th in 2022.

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Mark Daniels of masslive.com reported on Tuesday, citing sources close to the quarterback, that Jones is excited to work with O’Brien again.

McDaniels left the Patriots in 2009 to become the head coach of the Denver Broncos. A two-year member of the New England staff, O’Brien moved from wide-receivers coach to quarterbacks coach and called plays for three seasons, the final one as offensive coordinator.

O’Brien left to become head coach at Penn State in 2012, with McDaniels returning to New England in his former position after being fired by Denver and spending a season as offensive coordinator of the St. Louis Rams.

O’Brien came to Alabama in 2021 after being fired four games into his seventh season as the head coach of the Houston Texans.

O’Brien was coming in when Jones was going out in Tuscaloosa.

“I think the most challenging thing for me was, when I came in here, learning this offense,” O’Brien said. “And I had a lot of people help me, people that were here before, guys on the coaching staff, obviously Bryce (Young). I’ve said before, Mac Jones, when he was working out for the draft, helped me a little bit, which was great.”

From 2021 to 2022, Jones’ rate of touchdown passes dropped from 4.2 to 3.2 percent, his average gain per pass fell from 7.0 to 6.3 yards and his completion rate dipped from 67.6 to 65.2 percent (although the Cincinnati Bengals’ Joe Burrow is the only quarterback to complete passes at a higher rate than Jones in his first two NFL seasons). Jones’ interception rate was 2.5 percent in each season.

The conditions under which Jones threw those passes also changed. Jones had been sacked 5.1 percent of the time while attempting to pass as a rookie. Last season, that rate jumped to 7.1 percent as Jones was sacked six more times in 2022 while playing 235 fewer snaps.

Between 2021 and 2022, the Patriots lost their guards – trading Shaq Mason to the Buccaneers and having Ted Karras depart in free agency. In 2022, center David Andrews missed three games, and Isaiah Wynn saw the most time at left tackle even though he played only 40 percent of New England’s offensive snaps.

Andrews was the only Patriots’ offensive lineman who played at least 60 percent of the snaps in each season.

Despite the offensive downturn in 2022, New England still went into the final game of the regular season needing only to win to reach the playoffs. Instead, the Patriots lost to the Buffalo Bills 35-23. While Jones threw three touchdown passes against the Bills, he also was intercepted three times.

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Mark Inabinett is a sports reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter at @AMarkG1.