England will look to hold on to their Six Nations favourites tag with a win over Wales on Saturday (4.45pm).
Jones today made two changes to the side that beat Italy 46-15, Danny Care replacing the injury Ben Youngs and Jonathan Joseph preferred to Ben Te’o, while the head coach’s opposite number had the luxury of naming an unaltered team.
That included Patchell at No 10, starting there for just the second time at international level but with the confidence of having marshalled Wales to a convincing 34-7 victory over Scotland last time out.
But Jones reckons doing something similar away from home at Twickenham will be a whole different challenge.
“It’s whether he has the bottle to handle it. We’ll find out on Saturday,” Jones said of six-cap Patchell.
“He hasn’t played much Test rugby at all.
“He is going to have [Chris] Robshaw at him, [Owen] Farrell at him, Care at him – all guys that have played a lot of Test rugby.
“Wales see themselves on a self-proclaimed roll at the moment.
“So we will see how they deal with Twickenham, and deal with us.
“They had nothing to lose [against Scotland], and they played with a great freedom.
“Now they have expectation, and they have to cope with that.
“It’s going to be different – they have a number of young players, we have an experienced side who love playing in front of 82,000 people that’s going to pose a completely different question.”
Gatland appeared to fire the starter pistol on the mind-games earlier this week by predicting Jones would pick Joseph over Te’o – which the Australian promptly did.
But Wales forward coach Robin McBryde refused to fire back at the England coach over Patchell’s ability.
“I’m not going to try, I know better,” McBryde said.
“He’s obviously got a few things to get off his chest and hopefully he’ll feel better for it.
“Anyone wearing the number 10 jersey is going to expect to be put under pressure.
“Patchell is surrounded by players from his own region [Scarlets] and that familiarity under the pressure of international rugby… hopefully his game will stand up. We saw last Saturday it was good to watch.”