Ugly season-opening loss for Drake Maye and the Patriots and Mike "I'm a family man, wanna bang?" Vrabel

Thursday 9/10/26

Rough and discouraging loss for the Patriots last night in their season opener against the Seahawks in Seattle. Sam Darnold went down early, so the Patriots were playing most of the game against the Seahawks' back-up quarterback and they still couldn't get it done.

Drake Maye was terrible, throwing three interceptions in the second half (well into which the Patriots had a 10-0 lead), including one off of his back foot, while running, late in the game deep in Seattle territory with the Pats trailing 13-10. No need to try and make that throw. Worst case scenario, you don't get the TD and kick a FG and go to overtime. He underthrew guys throughout the contest, which helped get A.J. Brown hurt, another bad thing that happened on a bad night.

I don't think Maye will be a bust per se, but I could see him not being anything special. He may merely be "fine." Really hard to win with just "fine." Okay, the Seahawks did that last year, but Darnold did his best to try and give that Super Bowl away early to the Patriots and the Patriots couldn't make him pay. To win consistently, year in, year out, you're going to need an elite quarterback. Darnold had his moment. But that's as far as a franchise can go with a non-elite QB. The Jim Plunkett days are long gone.

Maye seems like a solid guy and no head case (though I think he presses at times and gets "tight"), has the right attitude, prepares. But after watching him in the playoffs last year and then last night as he was being badly outplayed by Drew Lock, it's not as if the sardonic nickname of The Schedule is some ill fit for him at this juncture. He isn't rifling the ball in there. He's hesitant. You have to step up and fire that sucker with conviction.

Which brings me to another point: How stupid was it not to have Maye play at all in the preseason? That's on Mike "I'm a family man, wanna bang?" Vrabel. I swear, the smarter these dumb jocks try and act, the worse the results. Whether that's in baseball with analytics, or sitting out your starters for the entire preseason in the NFL.

And yes, obviously I'm aware that the baseball stuff comes from Yale graduates who never played a game of anything in their lives, but the athletes and ex-players in charge still go along with it. When did the Red Sox start faring better this season? When they did more of that whole play baseball thing rather than play analyticsball.

This game reminded me of the SMU-FSU contest from the other day. SMU did everything not to win that game. It was there for the taking time and time again for the Seminoles, and they refused to win. The Patriots aren't going to get many easier games than what that should have been last night with Darnold going down. When you're in that situation up 10-0 and it's getting late, and you have, or look like you may have, a hard schedule, you can't blow it.

Sitting your starters through the preseason is arrogant to me. The Patriots didn't look ready to go, even by early season standards. Would they have lost anyway if Maye and company had gotten some preseason reps? Who knows. He was bad with his arm and with his brain. But you can't convince me it wouldn't have helped.