Friday 4/26/24
Last night, the Patriots selected NC State quarterback Drake Maye with the third pick of the 2024 NFL draft, which was expected. As a Patriots fan, I had hoped they would trade down because their roster is so lacking in talent--it approaches a totality of holes--and because I don't think any of the quarterbacks in this draft are good enough to take you anywhere, which is how the league works right now: The quarterback takes you as far as the quarterback can go.
I don't like a one-dimensional league like that. I've always preferred when teams have different approaches and styles, any one of which may be more effective than any of the others. It's the homogenization of sports now, though, just as we have the homogenization of life. Maximum sterility.
Following Boston College, I know just how weak the ACC was during Maye's time in the conference. I also know how the Patriots' brass thinks. They view the quarterback spot as one that can magically fix the team, just like how when "Tommy" made them better than they ought to have been, those last few years especially.
This is a Robert Kraft kind of thinking. I believe he spearheaded the selection of Mac Jones, thinking he was Joe College and the BMoC and he'd come in and be a golden boy. Had the look, the pedigree, etc. Unfortunately, he had none of the skills, be they physical, mental, or in terms of leading a team.
We will see how it plays out, and I hope it works, but I don't think Maye will be the answer and the clock for the end of head coach's Jerod Mayo unofficially started ticking down last night.
Maye won't play this year, but he'll likely play in 2025. My prediction, if one wants to call it that, is he and Mayo and Mayo's staff are all gone from New England by 2027, and the Patriots will be right where they are now.
I think it's going to be a long time--perhaps as long as a generation or even more--before they are a legitimate title contender, and that will involve luck, because that's what landing the quarterback you need in part entails. There aren't a lot of them. But this is how the game is played now. The teams who have that guy contend; those that don't, don't.
I wouldn't necessarily fault Mayo at all for the pick. I don't think he has any idea what he's doing, I think he's going to fail at this job, but I also don't think he had a lot of say in the draft. He might have been the fifth or sixth voice in the room. My sense is he's in for a rude awakening when the season starts and the Patriots are losing most weeks and not proving to be very competitive. But again, who knows? They might start 6-1 and be taking it to people. I would just be very surprised. I'm expecting a repeat of last year, for the most part.
Let's say something notable is in there somewhere with Maye. Do the Patriots have a coach to find that and polish it and get it out of him? I seriously doubt that. Josh Allen was that way, and eventually that's what happened. Josh Allen could have just been a mess, I suppose, without that coaching. I have very little confidence in anyone the Patriots have in place on their staff.
Jacoby Brissett will be the starter this year, and I'm not sure anything speaks more to the Patriots' depressing situation and just how far they have fallen than the reality that Brissett was the third-string guy on the 2016 team that you didn't want to see at all when he was forced to go in there during the early portion of that season, and now he's your main guy, despite never having really risen above what he was back then.
I like the idea of quarterbacks in really strong conferences who are not on great teams (unless they are the primary basis for that team's success) who contend in conference against the perennial big dogs. The ACC was just not good, which is part of the reason you have teams wanting to jump ship.
But again, we'll let it play out and maybe a Patriots fan such as myself will be pleasantly surprised. Who backs up Brissett is another question. Presumably it wouldn't be Maye, given that there's a decent enough chance that Brissett goes down at some juncture, and I don't think you want to start Maye's career off by hustling him in from the sidelines in the second quarter of a game in Week 4. The Patriots may well think that Bailey Zappe was this prickish Iago-like guy when it came to Mac Jones, making Jones's problems worse, in which case, you wouldn't think they'd keep him with Maye coming in.
