Drake Maye’s arrival in New England came at a time when the Patriots were making big changes, following the departure of coach Bill Belichick and quarterback Mac Jones this past offseason.
Since taking over from veteran Jacoby Brissett, Maye has started eight games and shown signs of why the Patriots’ new front office picked him third overall in the draft last April.
Even though the Patriots are 3-10 and 2-6 with Maye as the starter, both the coaching staff and his teammates believe they have a quarterback they can build around in the future.
“I’m just trying to take it one day at a time, one game at a time,” Maye said this week. “I’m trying to learn from negative experiences or negative plays, learn from turnovers, learn from sacks that I take and see if I can get the ball out and do something better. That’s probably the biggest thing.
“Hopefully, the work that we’re putting in and the product that we’re putting out can lead to some positive plays and some positive wins down the road.”
Maye recently had his best performance of the season, completing 80% of his passes (24 of 30) for a season-high 238 yards and a touchdown in New England’s 25-24 loss to Indianapolis. He also had a 41-yard run, showing off his running ability, which has him averaging 9.1 yards per carry, the best among quarterbacks who have played at least nine games.
While Maye threw one interception off a tipped ball, he showed his best understanding of offensive coordinator Alex Van Pelt’s system, spreading the ball to six different players and getting the Patriots into the red zone multiple times.
However, the team struggled to score when they got there. They were only 2 of 6 in the red zone, including four trips inside the 10-yard line that only resulted in one touchdown. Poor red zone performance has been a problem for the team, which ranks 30th in the NFL in scoring touchdowns inside the 20.
Maye said fixing this issue will be a key focus for him in the last four games of the season.
“It’s tough to go out like that,” Maye said. “You can’t win games going four drives in the red zone that end in field goals. We’ve got to focus in on that. I think that’s been an emphasis of improvement for this offense. We know you have to score touchdowns to win in this league.”
Coach Jerod Mayo agrees that Maye needs to improve, but he also pointed out that other players around him need to do their part. He highlighted the offensive line, specifically rookie left guard Layden Robinson, rookie tackle Caedan Wallace, and Cole Strange, a 2022 first-round pick who is returning from a knee injury.
“You need a guy like Layden Robinson to show what he can do. We need a guy like Cole Strange before the end of the season to see what he can do,” Mayo said.
“You can use Caedan in that same bucket. We need to see what the receivers can do and what they’re going to look like going forward, and that’s the hard part for me. You want to win right now, but at the same time, I think it would be a disservice to go to the end of the season and not know exactly what we have.”
Robinson, who wants to improve his play for Maye, has seen how much Maye has grown as a leader since becoming the starter.
“He always has that confidence about him and you know how he takes control of the huddle,” Robinson said. “He gets in there, and he’s like, ‘All right, let’s go to work,’ basically. We rally behind him.”
Despite the team’s struggles, Van Pelt said there are no regrets about waiting to give Maye the starting role.
“Absolutely not. I think we had the plan going into place, and I think that it’s showing now that that was a good decision for us,” Van Pelt said. “Would he be as developed had he started the first game? Maybe. Could’ve gone the other way as well. I stated in the spring, this is a marathon, it’s not a sprint.
“This is about a career, franchise quarterback, and we’re trying to develop him in the right way. And I feel like we did it that way.”
