Patriots

“I won’t call Mac a dirty player because I know him personally and I think he’s a good dude, he’s a good kid. But, I will say that he has to stop being around these incidents. “

Sauce Gardner became the latest in a series of players to accuse Mac Jones of making dirty plays on the football field on Sunday.

He said that Jones intentionally hit him in the groin. Jones denied the accusation.

Devin McCourty, who was teammates with Jones on the Patriots for several seasons, commented on the situation during an appearance on WEEI’s Greg Hill Show.

“I won’t call Mac a dirty player because I know him personally and I think he’s a good dude, he’s a good kid. But, I will say that he has to stop being around these incidents.

“It won’t matter what any current teammate says, former teammate says,” McCourty continued. “It’s getting to the point where, ‘is it intentional? Is it on purpose?’ It’s not going to matter because once you’re involved in too many of these situations it is what it is.”

Last year, during his first game back from injury against the Bears, Jones made a play that led Chicago defensive back Jaquan Brisker to accuse Jones of intentionally kicking him in the groin. On Christmas Eve of last year, a low block from Jones on Cincinnati’s Eli Apple led to a fine from the NFL. Earlier in Jones’s career, Carolina linebacker Brian Burns said that Jones twisted his ankle.

“You can’t come back and say, ‘no, this is what [I] meant to do]. There are a lot of players that have played this game and they’re not involved in any of these things. I think he needs to do a better job of finding his way out of whatever it is you want to call it … all of these different things, I think for anybody you can’t keep defending the same things.”

Jones declined to comment further on the Gardner incident when asked about it on Wednesday.

“Just really focused on the Cowboys and trying to prepare for a good defense,” Jones said. “That’s my focus, trying to control the controllables.”