Did the Patriots pick a winner in Mac Jones? Now, we’ll finally find out.

The most difficult game to play in the NFL isn’t a road game, a Thursday night game on a short week, or even a Super Bowl. It’s the quarterback game. The most influential position in North American professional team sports is also the most enigmatic one to forecast correctly.

NFL decision-makers play Alan Turing and try again and again to crack the QB code. Yet it still feels as unscientific as playing a scratch ticket. Can’t-miss QBs often do.

San Francisco and offensive guru Kyle Shanahan bet big on Trey Lance in the 2021 draft, trading three first-round picks and a 2022 third-rounder to move up nine spots to select him No. 3 overall. After four starts and two wins, the 49ers basically put him on eBay and shipped him to Dallas for a fourth-rounder, cementing the gambit to draft Lance as one of the worst trades in NFL history.

It stands as a QB cautionary tale. Full disclosure: I whiffed as badly as the Niners on Lance. He was my favorite QB in the 2021 draft.

Yours truly was also the genius who wanted the Patriots to pass on a quarterback in the first round that year, draft another position first, and take Kellen Mond later — mon Dieu. Mond’s number of NFL completions matches the number of teams that have waived him — two. Granted, my sense is that was Patriots coach Bill Belichick’s original plan too, just with another quarterback, not Mond.

That brings us to the Patriots, who took Mac Jones No. 15 overall as the last of the five first-round QBs in the 2021 draft class, and their plight projecting a successful successor to Tom Brady. The big picture on Jones remains fuzzy in Foxborough.

There is no more pertinent task for the Patriots this year after Jones’s sophomore season was sabotaged by offensive coordinator incompetence than determining whether they struck quarterback gold or just passer pyrite. The message from cutdown day Tuesday was that they’re all-in on the resurgence and reappearance of Alabama Mac. The team left Jones as the only QB on the initial 53-man roster, cutting his ersatz competition, second-year signal-caller Bailey Zappe.

Only a few desperate, delusional souls were still clinging to Zappe Fever during training camp, as Jones left Zappe in the dust in a new offense installed by offensive coordinator Bill O’Brien tailored to Jones and his mental prowess. Zappe is back on the practice squad after slipping through waivers, but the proclamation was clear: This is Jones’s job. There will be no repeat of the self-inflicted QB controversy invited by Belichick last year with his refusal to knight Jones immediately after he returned from his ankle injury.

The Patriots backup QB needs to act as Mac’s confidant and caddie, not his catty competition. Jones is already ahead of two of his Class of 2021 QB alumni, Lance and Zach Wilson, who has been supplanted by Aaron Rodgers with the New York Jets. No.

1 overall pick Trevor Lawrence is the only one with a playoff win. Justin Fields, taken No. 11 by the Chicago Bears, is entering a make-or-break season a la Jones.

Always bet on Mac is apparently now the Patriots mantra. Holistically, assessing the history of quarterbacks, what are the odds that the Patriots replaced Brady successfully on their first real try? The 49ers — from Joe Montana to Steve Young — and the Green Bay Packers — from Brett Favre to Rodgers — pulled off the trick. However, both of those teams had their successor in incubation.

Teams wander aimlessly through the quarterback wilderness for years, sometimes decades, trying to rediscover what they once enjoyed. The Miami Dolphins are still trying to replace Dan Marino. He retired following the 1999 season.

Tua Tagovailoa is their latest heir/air apparent. Sometimes even when you believe you found The Guy, you haven’t. The Patriots only need look to their season-opening opponents, the Philadelphia Eagles, for proof.

Observe the curious case of Carson Wentz, currently jobless. He looked like a Donovan McNabb-caliber franchise quarterback for Philly during his second season in 2017, a legitimate MVP contender until he tore an ACL. The Eagles signed him to a monster contract (four years, $128 million) in June of 2019.

But less than a year later, they drafted Jalen Hurts in the second round. It was a wise move. Wentz led the NFL in interceptions in 2020.

Hurts has led the Eagles to the playoffs the last two seasons, including Super Bowl LVII last season. The quarterback quest is quixotic, a method of madness that defies invariables. It’s the sports equivalent of scouring the beach with a metal detector looking for colonial coins.

How do you explain Brady, a sixth-round compensatory selection, becoming the greatest quarterback of all time? Or explain the final pick of the 2022 draft, Brock Purdy, emerging as the starter for the Super Bowl contender 49ers over Lance? What about Montana, still the best quarterback ever to some, being a third-round pick in 1979? The position is as volatile and unpredictable as it is valuable. Some quarterbacks bust out, others are just busts. The NFL graveyard is littered with the latter: Sam Bradford (2010), JaMarcus Russell (2007), David Carr (2002), Tim Couch (1999), and Jeff George (1990) were all hyped No.

1 overall picks who ultimately flamed out. Jameis Winston (2015) and Baker Mayfield (2018), now with his fourth team, appear poised to join that group. You could do the same exercise with No.

2 overall picks such as Wentz, Mitchell Trubisky, Marcus Mariota, Robert Griffin III, Ryan Leaf, and Rick Mirer, and No. 3 overall picks Sam Darnold, Vince Young, Joey Harrington, and Akili Smith. Of the 97 quarterbacks taken in the top 15 since 1967, the dawn of the common draft era, 30 have made multiple Pro Bowls (31 percent).

That number will increase because Joe Burrow, Justin Herbert, and Lawrence all figure to make another Pro Bowl during their careers. Jones also could add to his player participation trophy Pro Bowl appearance with a genuine one. There’s not a tougher position to evaluate and get right in the NFL than quarterback.

Cruelly, it’s the one teams most need to get right. The toughest part about the quarterback game is that you usually don’t know you’ve lost until it’s too late. It’s time to find out whether the Patriots picked a winner.

.