Two weeks ago, the New England Patriots’ Friday injury report listed Mac Jones as out for the Oct. 2 game against the Green Bay Packers. One week ago, the Patriots’ Friday injury report showed Jones as doubtful for the Oct. 9 game against Detroit Lions. This week’s Friday injury report lists Jones as questionable for Sunday’s game against the Cleveland Browns.

But that progression up the injury-designation chart doesn’t mean the former Alabama All-American will be ready to play on Sunday. Jones is dealing with an ankle injury suffered on New England’s final offensive snap in a 37-26 loss to the Baltimore Ravens on Sept. 25.

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The first reports on Jones’ injury indicated he might be headed to surgery, but Belichick has steadfastly referred to Jones’ situation as day-to-day (although on Friday he said this week he had “tried to avoid that phrase and give it a little break. I think I kind of maximized it there.”) Now reporters are inquiring when Jones could be cleared by the Patriots’ medical team.

“It could happen anytime,” Belichick said on Friday. “There’s no deadline on that. The injury report is the injury report. There’s a deadline on that, and there’s a classification on that. That’s what we follow. Internally, we can do whatever we want — not do whatever we want, but based on the information that’s available, we can make any determination that’s appropriate.

“Again, part of that is how a player feels, what he’s able to do, what he’s not able to do, what the recovery from what his previous output was or wasn’t. But, no, I’m not going into what we have internally, we talk about the players and all that.”

Belichick said he wouldn’t become involved in deciding if Jones could return to the lineup or serve as an emergency backup to rookie Bailey Zappe until Jones and the team’s physicians and trainers say the quarterback is ready to play again.

“Until the player is medically cleared to play, then there’s no coaching decision involved,” Belichick said. “Once the player has been medically cleared to play, then I would say, in consultation with the player and the medical staff: What is the player being asked to do? So a kicker has a sore leg, and the decision is: Well, he can kick field goals up to a certain range, but wouldn’t be able to kickoff. All right, then as a coach, that’s your decision. You could say, ‘All right, OK, we’ll take this player at, let’s call it, 80 percent, and here’s what his field-goal range would be – 80 percent — and he’s not going to kick off and play under those circumstances assuming that the player also felt comfortable doing that. Right, so that kind of would be an example of a player playing at less than a hundred percent but functional to a point. Understand that you’re going to have to get somebody else to kick off and you’re not going to be trying maximum-length field goals.

“That would be an example, so just put that into some other position and take some other player and have the same conversation if it gets to that point. That would be the hypothetical situation. I think it’s easier to say that and think about that with a kicker, who has a very specific job, rather than getting to somebody else. Like if it’s an offensive guard — he can only run so fast straight ahead. How much is he going to pull? That gets into, like, a whole other rabbit hole that none of us want to go down.”

Belichick did not say what percent the status of Jones may be, but he said the quarterback had shown progress as a limited participant in practice this week.

“Mac, I think is making a good improvement,” Belichick said before Friday’s practice. “We’ll see where he is today. Certainly, he’s doing a lot more this last Thursday than he did last Thursday. I’d imagine Friday will be the same thing, but we’ll see.

“Again, if a player has an injury, he goes out and does whatever he’s capable or instructed to do. Then we see how he responds and what happens. Nobody knows the answer to that question. So if the next day he feels better, then he does more. If the next day, he doesn’t feel better or has soreness or whatever, then we back off and then try it again once he feels like we’re at the next read, so it’s a process of steps. When you go one step, then you go to the next step. If you can’t make it through that step, then you step back and step through it again, so nobody knows how they’re going to feel tomorrow after what they do today. I don’t know how anybody’s going to feel that are in that category.

“We’ll see where it is. If it’s better on Saturday than it was Friday, then maybe it’s a game-day workout. If it’s worse, then we probably would downgrade the player. If it feels great today and tomorrow feels great, then we’re good to go. But that’s why Saturday is an important day in this whole process. I know everybody wants a definite answer, but it’s just totally unrealistic to be able to do that. I don’t know how a player’s going to feel after three days of practice depending upon what the volume is or the intensity is. That’s impossible to know until you actually experience it or he experiences it, so we’ll see.”

Jones started 20 regular-season games and a playoff contest to open his NFL career. But with Jones sidelined by the ankle injury, Brian Hoyer stepped in at quarterback against the Packers.

Hoyer left that game with a concussion, giving Zappe most of the time under center in a 27-24 overtime loss in his NFL debut. The Patriots are coming off a 29-0 victory over the Lions with Zappe completing 17-of-21 passes for 188 yards with one touchdown and one interception.

New England plays the Browns at noon CDT Sunday at FirstEnergy Stadium in Cleveland.

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The Patriots’ injury and practice participation report on Friday assigned designations to 10 players, and like Jones, the other nine are listed as questionable, including former Alabama standouts Damien Harris (hamstring) and Christian Barmore (knee) and Auburn alumnus Jonathan Jones (ankle).

Harris was listed as a limited participant in practice on Thursday and Friday after the NFL Network reported the running back would miss “multiple games” after getting hurt on Sunday.

Belichick was asked what it takes for a player to go from questionable on Friday’s injury report to active in Sunday’s game.

“We follow the NFL rules on that,” Belichick said. “Whatever the player’s status is, wherever he falls, whatever category it is, then we list him appropriately. Again, we make a decision whenever that decision can be made. Sometimes it’s a game-time decision. Sometimes a player could be listed like that and even if he was healthy, he might not be activated because of the number of activations that we have to have based on for competitive reasons and not injury reasons.

“But we still have to list everybody based on the NFL rules, so that’s what we do. Then if they’re out, then they’re out, and if they’re not out, then we can make a decision competitively whether that person will or won’t play.”

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