Why Drake Maye’s second-year leap is the key to turning Patriots around

Henry McKenna

NFL Reporter

FOXBOROUGH, Mass. — It was Drake Maye out front for conditioning when the New England Patriots wrapped up their OTA practice last week. He called out a snap count and took off, with roughly 30 offensive teammates trailing behind him.

It’s a sign of what’s to come this season. It’ll be Maye out front. The Patriots have turned the organization over to him.

No question. New England is his.

“Worlds different,” Maye said when asked how far he’s come since last summer. “Shoot, I was talking to [Jabrill Peppers] about that earlier. I remember this time last year, seeing single-high … Pep and [Kyle Dugger] — they were playing with me the whole snap. I messed it up.”

Now?

“Confidence,” he said.

There’s no question about how far Maye has come. But there are plenty of questions about how far he’ll take the Patriots in 2025 and beyond.

They just barely won four games last season, stealing a win from the Buffalo Bills’ backups in Week 18. (I’d argue New England was really a three-win team.) And now, many are picking the Patriots to make the playoffs.

Even though Maye is the irrefutable QB1, he is still going to need a lot of help.

Maye is working under a new coaching staff, namely head coach Mike Vrabel, offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels and quarterbacks coach Ashton Grant. There’s a new system. There’s new verbiage. There is a new supporting cast.

“I was really starting to find a stride. I’m kind of bummed we’re about to leave,” Maye said on Monday at the end of minicamp.

If the Patriots are going to make the playoffs, this coaching staff has the enviable but difficult task of converting one of the NFL’s most promising passers into one of the league’s best.

“I think Drake’s just doing a hell of a job with the change from one offense to another,” Grant said Monday. “He has a great grasp of it so far.”

This phase of the offseason is less about results and more about progress. So it might have made headlines that Maye threw four interceptions during the first open session of OTAs in May, but the second-year QB should have put the anxious souls (on Boston sports radio) at ease over the next two open practices, when he made clear progress, decreasing his mistakes and increasing efficiency.

He’ll have more bad days in training camp and probably on Sundays this fall.

That’s just how learning works: Progression comes with regression.

But Maye and McDaniels seem to be finding their footing in these early days. They’ll have to keep doing it under tremendous scrutiny. Blend the Patriots’ busy offseason (with a lot of free agency spending) with Maye’s promising year and the QB will face high expectations.

“You want high expectations,” Maye said. “The Patriots are used to winning. That’s what we want to get back to.”

Now in his third stint as Patriots offensive coordinator, Josh McDaniels needs to get the most out of Drake Maye for the team to become a winner again. (Photo by Fred Kfoury III/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

Are they unrealistic?

McDaniels was asked how he’ll manage these expectations for the young QB.

“If I know him very well — which I’m learning more and more about him every single day — he’s going to place high expectations on himself,” McDaniels said. “We can’t really control outside expectations. … Hopefully we meet our expectations, which will eventually meet yours.”

Maye is, after all, the former No. 3 overall pick. He also had a rookie season that had New England buzzing. His counting statistics and win total didn’t speak to a special year. But those numbers ignore the lack of a supporting cast with arguably the league’s worst roster and offensive line. Maye was solid. And most importantly, he didn’t break. (Though, it’s important to note he did suffer a concussion last year.)

This phase of the offseason is dangerous because fans and media members spend time thinking about what’s ahead for Maye. Folks get so caught up in what he can be that they forget what he is at this moment: still a developmental project. And now he’s learning his second NFL system in as many years — a process that could set back that development.

Maye will have three new protectors on the offensive line (Will Campbell, Morgan Moses and Garrett Bradbury) and two new receivers (Stefon Diggs, Kyle Williams). Rookie running back TreVeyon Henderson also arrived as a second-round draft pick.

Change can be good. Change can be bad. Change always brings uncertainty.

“You’re kind of starting to see it [come together],” Maye said when asked about the new-look offensive line. “They’re doing their part. I gotta get the ball out to help them out.”

On the coaching staff, the new group is eclectic and experienced. Passing game coordinator Thomas Brown was the interim head coach for the Chicago Bears last year. Offensive line coach Doug Marrone was the Bills’ head coach for a few years. Receivers coach Todd Downing served as the Titans’ offensive coordinator for two years. If you’re looking for overlap between the systems they’ve coached, you’ll find some, largely through Vrabel’s coaching tree. None of these coaches has ever worked with McDaniels before.

There will be a melting pot of concepts, schemes and wrinkles.

“When you take a lot of people from different backgrounds, and they have such good experience and wisdom doing things you don’t, I think it makes a lot of sense for me to basically learn from them in what they can teach me,” McDaniels said.

He wouldn’t put a number on how much of his playbook is completely new. But McDaniels admitted he’s not sticking simply to what he knows from his career, most recently in Las Vegas as head coach and in New England as offensive coordinator.

Grant laid out the three touchstones around which New England will base its playbook — in no particular order. It’ll be about what Josh McDaniels likes to run. It’ll be about what Drake Maye has already done well. It’ll be about the new and different ideas from the other offensive assistant coaches, who have fallen from several coaching trees.

“I think you have to have a starting point,” McDaniels said when asked if he’ll build the system from scratch. “And then really it’s going to be about giving [the players] some things to go out and do on the practice field and then learning what they do well, how much they can process, what style we should play. And I’ve always kind of believed the players dictate what we end up being.”

Surely more than McDaniels is willing to admit, his quarterback will dictate what the Patriots end up being.

“We went back and watched a lot of Drake [on film],” Grant said. “So Josh was very in tune to what Drake did well last year.”

There is nothing more crucial than Maye’s development for New England. And it’s clear this staff is giving the QB the attention he deserves.

Before joining FOX Sports as an NFL reporter and columnist, Henry McKenna spent seven years covering the Patriots for USA TODAY Sports Media Group and Boston Globe Media. Follow him on Twitter at @henrycmckenna.

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