Mac Jones stands at his locker — a fusty metal; the color of dirty dishwater — in the visiting team’s locker room at MetLife Stadium. He’s traded his Patriots uniform for a pair of black pants and a gray hoodie, a somber ensemble that befits his mood. He never turns around, only directs his gaze toward his locker, leaning slightly forward, like if he crept in, it could offer an escape out of this mess.

The lowly Patriots have just fallen to the lowly Giants, 10-7, their ninth loss of the season. It was a miserable affair that, for Jones, ended with his fourth benching this year, and second in as many games.

Over Jones’ shoulder, a Patriots employee hollers out once, then twice: “Bailey is at the podium!” And it’s a strange kind of salt in the wound, this public service announcement that Bailey Zappe, the man who has been tasked with putting Jones out of his misery today, and for much of this season, is holding court at the postgame news conference. Meanwhile, Jones — once regarded as the future of this franchise — packs up the tokens of another failed effort into an oversized team-issued duffel. There goes his chest pad he wore for the first interception he threw, a back-foot toss into triple coverage that the Giants’ Deonte Banks turned into a balletic, toe-tapping catch. There goes the helmet he had on for the second interception he panicked into, when his blocking imploded and so did his decision-making.

A few minutes later, that same Patriots employee escorts Jones to the podium. “I really just gotta look in the mirror again and keep going at it,” he says. “I’m not going to quit.”

He reaffirms his devotion to this game, even as he looks beaten down by it. Two weeks earlier, after his third benching against the Colts — that time across the ocean in Germany — he arrived at the podium red-eyed and shaky-voiced. He doesn’t look much better tonight, if slightly steelier. Less shocked and more calloused, perhaps.

After an efficient three minutes or so behind the microphone, Jones exits through a side door, grabs a black leather briefcase in one hand, a Louis Vuitton briefcase in the other, then makes his way through the bowels of the stadium, grim-faced, like he’s walking out of a job interview he just bombed spectacularly.

He makes a quick pit stop at the team’s buffet table, where — looking for all the world like a man who couldn’t stomach a bite — he still surveys the options; chicken, fruit, cookies. He grabs some for the road, then he wends his way through the concourse, walking behind the gray partition that separates players from the rest of the stadium’s employees, who are busy putting MetLife to bed. Jones heads toward the garage doors that wait to open, revealing the steady mist that has left North Jersey raw and dank. That’s where the team bus idles, ready to take him back to New England, and a future there that is as murky as this night.