Patriots Mailbag: The Drake Maye dilemma, expanding the offense and more

Patriots Mailbag: The Drake Maye dilemma, expanding the offense and more originally appeared on NBC Sports Boston

The Drake Maye era in New England has officially begun. But plenty of fans are wondering why that era is beginning this Sunday against the Houston Texans, and not later (or earlier).

Let’s hit your questions on the new QB1 and more in a new Patriots Mailbag.

I completely understand this question when it comes to the difficulty of this upcoming game. Your logic is sound there. It’s a bad situation for a young quarterback. They’re about to see an excellent opposing defense with a ferocious pass-rush. Doesn’t add up.

But I think the question discounts the human expectations in the human environment that is an NFL locker room. The assumption for the people there is that decision-makers will do whatever they can to help the myriad folks who make up that particular ecosystem to win football games.

The Patriots have staved off this decision for as long as they can. They made alterations to the receiver corps. They’ve changed personnel on the offensive line — sometimes by choice, sometimes not — every week. Their passing game remained dysfunctional.

The last and most obvious lever to pull was to go to Drake Maye.

He’s healthy. He’s practicing well. The team knows what kind of talent he possesses. From afar, it’d be easy to argue they should wait just one more week. When you’re in it, though, and when you have to constantly gauge the buy-in and motivation levels of your locker room — especially as a first-year staff — it’s a lot harder to wait another seven days.

As far as the public-relations portion of it, I don’t believe that’s part of the calculus. Those would be horrid reasons to make a change. They already have plenty of legitimate reasons to make the move without needing extraneous ones to enter into the conversation.

I argued after the San Francisco loss that it was a good time to consider playing Maye. Feel the same way now. He was going to get out there at some point this season, no matter what.

Start the clock now. Let him work through his issues. See how he looks when he gets out the other side. Hard to keep him on the bench while things were going the way they’ve been going offensively.

Yes. Part of the hope for the Patriots was that they could get their offensive line settled — to a degree, knowing it won’t realistically be a top-tier unit this year — before playing Drake Maye. Getting him behind a line that has struggled since camp, and in particular against the Jets and 49ers in back-to-back games, was a concern.

The line showed “progress” (Jerod Mayo’s word) against the Dolphins, and the Patriots might trot out that same starting group for the second game in a row — which would be the first time this year that’s occurred. (We’ll see if the team rolls with center Nick Leverett again in Week 6.) I assumed last week that the Patriots might want to play two games with their captain at center David Andrews out of the lineup.

They’re rolling with Maye one week earlier than that, which is an indication of A) how urgently they saw the need for a fix for their passing game as well as B) Maye’s readiness.

I don’t think the coaching staff is viewing this as the high point for the line, by any means. They’re hoping for continued “progress” as Maye gains experience throughout the course of the remainder of his rookie year.

In ideal circumstances, they would’ve played more efficiently offensively against Miami, and Jacoby Brissett would’ve solidified his claim to the starting gig for another week.

Had the offense been performing better — even if just to an average level — I believe they would’ve been happy to let Maye continue to learn behind the scenes.

Quarterbacks were told Monday. Players were off Tuesday. Jerod Mayo addressed the team about the decision on Wednesday. Some players beyond the quarterback room likely knew prior to Tuesday, but not all.

Mayo acknowledged he was “a little” upset that the news got out before he could address the team. But such is life in the NFL in 2024. People learn of some piece of news — not only organizational personnel, but also agents and family members, etc. — and it gets out.

Players I’ve spoken to understand the landscape. Hearing news on television or seeing it on social media isn’t a new phenomenon, nor is it new to this new Patriots regime. To steal a line, it is what it is.

I’ll say three. Can’t tell you where they are. But let’s go with three for now.

It’s a good question, Dylan. He’ll have to do some of the things you’re likely looking for: making plays off-script, running for yardage, pushing passes into tight windows. But those are almost just a function of going against a good defense.

I think he’ll also be asked to run plays that Alex Van Pelt wouldn’t ask Jacoby Brissett to try to execute. RPOs, zone-read runs, more sprint-out plays or roll-out plays. All of those things are things that Maye is better-suited to run, and I believe that in order to squeeze some productivity out of the offense, Van Pelt will call upon all of those things to varying degrees on Sunday.

They might be, Boom. I wouldn’t be stunned if they tried Bryan Hudson at center.

We went through some of the numbers here, Dongo. To sum it up, there were six plays in the game where the Patriots allowed Jacoby Brissett to be pressured in under two seconds. Not much he could’ve done in those situations.

But they also had five pressures that occurred late in the down, where one could argue the ball should’ve come out more quickly.

David Andrews wants to play, Trygve. He’s expected to be healthy enough to go. And he still has plenty of physical ability to carry out those duties.

Would be nice for Maye and the rest of the offense to have his veteran savvy available to them on the field in Year 2 of this regime’s rebuild.