Patriots
“That’s not sustainable and it’s not winning football.”
COMMENTARY
Just minutes after making his NFL debut at MetLife Stadium, Drake Maye viewed his first reps through a critical lens.
“I can’t take stupid sacks,” Maye said. “We were trying to get the quick game, trying to get the ball out, and I can’t take sacks in that situation.”
It’s the type of accountable, clichéd musing one might expect from a young rookie QB trying to find his footing at football’s highest level.
But one doesn’t have to spend a lot of time reviewing Thursday’s game tape to see that Maye — and fellow QB Jacoby Brissett — were going to be doomed from the start at the Meadowlands.
Maye’s debut stood as one of the few embers of optimism drawn from an otherwise woeful 24-3 loss to the Jets in primetime.
On a night where New England only gained 11 first downs and 139 total yards of offense, Maye led his team 46 yards down the field over the final 4:24 of regulation — gaining four first downs.
It was far from perfect — with Maye’s first pass nearly getting picked over the middle and the first-round QB subsequently speared into the turf two plays later while trying to scramble.
But it was a reminder of just how much promise Maye can offer to a Patriots’ offense in need of a lift.
And if the Patriots and Jerod Mayo plan on rebuilding this franchise properly, Thursday should stand as the last we see of Maye in a real-game setting for quite some time.
Because with this banged-up offensive line standing as the last line of defense for New England’s most-prized asset, an extended run of Maye under center in 2024 can only lead to disaster.
“It was bad. Bad in all phases,” center David Andrews said after a night where New England’s offensive line coughed up seven sacks and a whopping 15 hits to their signal-callers. “We didn’t play a game like how we wanted to play. They dictated what we wanted to do.”
While Maye will likely be sporting a few bruises after his debut, it’s a miracle that Brissett’s frame isn’t held together by duct tape just three weeks into a new season.
New England’s starting QB took seven sacks in Thursday’s loss, with the veteran given little time to scan the field in hopes of getting his team’s broken offense off the ground.
As noted by Doug Kyed of the Boston Herald, New England’s offensive linemen relinquished 22 pressures on Thursday night — on 35 total dropbacks.
In other words, a Patriots’ O-line currently rolling out a rookie in Caedan Wallace at left tackle (who primarily played right tackle in college), and a backup at left guard in Michael Jordan is not doing nearly enough to support any quarterback — let another a top-three pick like Maye.
And with both Wallace and Jordan now nursing injuries, it could get a whole lot worse for New England moving forward.
“We’re gonna work and we’re gonna try to do everything we can to be better,” Andrews noted. “That’s not sustainable and it’s not winning football.”
Even Mayo was quick to acknowledge that New England’s O-line is cratering whatever sort of foundation his team’s offense is trying to build this fall. He also acknowledged that his team’s woeful pass protection did give him pause before deciding to throw Maye into the game for garbage-time reps.
“I thought the offensive line had a hard time,” New England’s head coach said. “There were times earlier in the game where the pockets look pretty clean, but as the game wore on, similar to last week, it started falling apart as far as the protections.
“And it’s not only knowing you know how to do it, it’s also knowing what to do. I would also say we have some injuries up front that the next man has to be ready to go.”
But even with the writing being on the wall that any QB is destined to be shredded standing behind this offensive line — Mayo did keep his options open about a switch at signal-caller moving forward.
“I don’t know,” Mayo said. “We talk about every single week, you’re competing for a job. So we’ll get together as a coaching staff and see where it goes.”
In a long season where positives might be hard to come by, it’s tempting to give Maye an extended look at some point in the next few weeks. You could make the argument that Maye’s athleticism and howitzer of an arm could give New England’s offense the spark it might need.
But given how quickly the Patriots’ pocket has collapsed over the last two weeks, just how realistic is it to expect Maye will have any shot of sailing passes down the sideline to Javon Baker or Ja’Lynn Polk?
And while Maye has the wheels to evade pressure, putting your rookie QB constantly under duress in his first year doesn’t seem like the best way to ease him into such a franchise-altering role.
“We just got beat pretty handily,” Mayo said. “And I would say right now, everything is of concern.”
The Patriots already have enough problems on their plate in 2024.
The last thing they want to do is add another disastrous one by introducing Maye to a season’s worth of punishment, pain, and confidence-sapping second guesses.
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