After finishing second in MVP voting and appearing in the Super Bowl last season, expectations for New England Patriots quarterback Drake Maye were sky-high entering 2026.
The Patriots went all-in, trading for elite All-Pro wide receiver A.J. Brown and made a slew of savvy free-agent signings, like adding wide receiver Romeo Doubs, guard Alijah Vera-Tucker, and fullback/tight end Reggie Gilliam. These moves only heightened expectations entering the season.
Instead, the Patriots have sputtered like a Ford Model-T out of the gate, starting with a clunky 1-2 record, and Maye has thrown six interceptions to just one touchdown.
What in the world is going on? Is Drake Maye bad, and we were all duped last season? Was he really just a product of his bad schedule last season?
The answer is no. However, he no doubt has to play better than he has to start the season. I don’t have any doubts that he is capable of playing better than he is, but there are a few things going on this season that help add context to his opening struggles.
Let’s dive in:
The Patriots are a brutal watch
Just to get it out of the way, I want to talk about the surroundings before we start getting into Drake Maye specifically.
The offensive line is still a total work in progress
The pressure and sack totals look better than they did last year for the Patriots, but this offensive line is still dreadful in general. They’re already on their third right guard of the season, right tackle Morgan Moses has had Father Time catch up to him, and left tackle Will Campbell is still struggling to win one-on-one.
The Patriots are sixth in the league in pressure % allowed and ninth in time to pressure, per Next Gen Stats, and that’s with them pulling out all the stops to generate protection. They also aren’t getting blitzed all that often, facing the ninth-fewest blitzes in the NFL. Teams know they only need to rush four beyond a few situations to generate pressure.
Patriots might as well have you and me at the skill positions
Maye’s not exactly throwing to a competent team either. With A.J. Brown out, the Patriots’ wide receiver room has devolved into a complete mess. Their most consistent wide receiver right now is Mack Hollins. Hollins is the ideal WR4…he should not be a WR1.
The Patriots’ wide receivers have forced zero missed tackles through three games. According to Next Gen Stats, they are also the second slowest wide receiver room in the NFL.
On top of that, there’s a real lack of detail and polish to the offense, particularly at wide receiver. Players are dropping passes, running routes lackadaisically, releasing wrong, and processing pretty poorly against zone coverage.
Their tight end room isn’t brimming with talent either. Henry is a fine possession tight end, but at this stage of his career, he’s not threatening defenses with his speed down the seams. Eli Raridon can, but he’s now hurt. The rest of the room is filled with blocking tight ends.
At running back, Rhamondre Stevenson is a classic case of “he’ll get you three yards when you need three yards, and he’ll get you three yards when you need five yards.” He’s a consistent pass protector and has very good processing and good hands as a receiver, but he simply doesn’t have the speed to create plays.
TreVeyon Henderson does have plenty of athleticism, but his decision-making and vision are still highly erratic. While there are ways to maximize him that aren’t being realized, it’s understandable why he hasn’t been more than a change-of-pace back.
The Patriots’ scheme feels straight out of 2008
If you read my rookie roundup piece, you might remember where I criticized the Browns’ head coach Todd Monken’s scheme for its usage of Denzel Boston. It felt very outdated and not in line with modern football.
Watching Josh McDaniels’ scheme is a very similar watch. Sure, some of the concepts work and get open, but nothing feels easy, and everything is placed onto Drake Maye’s shoulders pretty consistently.
New England is 31st in motion rate, 32nd in no-huddle, and 28th in play-action rate. While being first in any of these metrics doesn’t necessarily mean an elite offense, collectively being at the bottom of these marks is a bad sign.
The spacing in the offense is poor, and it feels like defenses are easily picking up and keying in on the tendencies and route combinations.
The Patriots have a fairly limited roster of players…and there’s little scheme help to even try and help uplift them and put the players in a position to succeed.
Sure, the Patriots do a decent job of moving the ball (12th in yards per drive), but it’s mainly due to Maye’s own ability to make plays happen rather than anything else.
Is Drake Maye making bad decisions?
Let’s finally dive into Maye himself.
I wanted to start by taking a look at Drake Maye’s interceptions so far in 2026. Is he simply being dumb and not seeing defenders? Is he making bad throws? What’s going on? Let’s go in order.
INT #1 vs Seattle Seahawks
It’s 2nd & 9 with the score 10-3. Seattle had just scored a field goal, and New England was fresh off a 3-play, 0-yard drive. New England’s offense had already had a few setbacks on this drive courtesy of an illegal block above the waist penalty and a false start, but Maye had set them up with a fresh set of downs.
He uncorks a jump ball down the sideline to Romeo Doubs off of play-action. In hindsight, he should have taken the checkdown to #9 Corey Kiner, but he also at some point has to force Seattle’s defense to back off to open up the offense. I’d largely put this one on Maye forcing a throw to make something happen.
INT #2 vs Seattle Seahawks
Now, it’s a tied ball game at 10-10, and the Patriots are sitting in a 3rd and 14 at their own 22. Seattle’s sitting in a two-high shell, and it looks like the Patriots dial up a 989 call (don’t really love this vs two-high in general).
I don’t think anyone is ever truly open on this play, so Maye should have probably just thrown this one away (although it’s easy to say that in hindsight). Instead, it’s a bad ball thrown behind Douglas, and Julian Love makes an incredible play to break and jump the route. I would put this one on Maye forcing the decision again as well.
INT #3 vs Seattle Seahawks
This interception at the end of the game is tricky to parse through. The play itself looks dead as soon as the ball is snapped. The tackles cut block, which tells me it’s a quick game throw, but the receivers run deep.
Maye half throws it away, half throws a jump ball to Mack Hollins in the end zone. Cornerback Josh Jobe bullies Hollins off the route and picks the ball off. I’m not really sure I would put this throw on Maye. Funnily enough, this is a similar situation that Cowboys fans dealt with on Sunday and are mad at their head coach for telling Dak Prescott to throw the ball high and away in this same situation.
I will give Maye a little bit of grace on this one, personally. He does sort of force it, but it’s also a completely screwed play all around. Tough to say either way.
INT #4 vs Pittsburgh Steelers
This one is really straightforward, in my mind. Maye has tight end Hunter Henry open on a crossing route, but pressure in his face hurries up his process, and the ball comes out short and is easily picked off. I wouldn’t put that one entirely on Maye, as it’s the right read, just an unfortunate result.
INT #5 vs Jacksonville Jaguars
Simple play call here on 3rd and 2. It’s a play-action rollout, and Maye has a high-low read depending on the defense’s leverage. If the defense bites on the RB (Stevenson), the ball goes to his wide receiver up top in Efton Chism. If the defense backs up, it goes to Stevenson.
The problem here is that both options are…pretty well covered. Chism releases inside instead of driving outside towards the back pylon, which lets Travis Hunter stay in-phase the whole way, while safety Eric Murray is right on top of Stevenson. Within three seconds, Maye has nowhere to go with the ball and has three defenders in pursuit of him.
To me, Maye is trying to throw this out of the back of the end zone, and he puts it behind Chism with a rusher in his face. That’s a smart decision in my opinion. Unfortunately for him, Travis Hunter is a freak of nature and is able to stop on a dime, pivot, and leap to high point and catch the football like that. Not many corners in the league can make that play.
I’m chalking this up to surroundings & the No.2 overall pick being an absurd athlete rather than on Maye.
INT #6 vs Jacksonville Jaguars
By this point of the game, it’s already 21-3 at the end of the third quarter, and it felt pretty out of reach.
Kyle Williams “runs” a curl route, but he’s dancing around too much off the line of scrimmage, and he loses at the top of the route.
Since the corner isn’t remotely threatened upfield, he’s in perfect position to jump the route and pick the ball off. The timing on a timing-based route is all off.
That one’s on Williams more than Maye, if you ask me.
Six interceptions, and I would put two of them outright on Maye, one half on Maye, and the remaining three I would attribute to his surroundings.
Drake Maye not be as bad as he looks
Despite the narrative, I don’t think Maye has been as bad as it seems. Analytically, he’s posting a better success rate as a passer than the likes of Joe Burrow, C.J. Stroud, and Matthew Stafford. His 47.8% dropback success rate is .08% behind Josh Allen’s (48.6%).
He’s done a tremendous job of lifting the offense so far, in my opinion. They are generating successful plays and explosive plays at around league-average, and it’s almost entirely coming from Maye through the air.
New England is dead last in rushing success rate at just 28.4%. The Patriots are also just 24th in EPA/Rush. Maye leads the team in runs over 10 yards. I wish I made that stat up.
The Patriots are 14th in explosive play rate offensively, with the seventh-most passes and the 26th-most runs. They have the seventh-most explosive passes despite being 26th in the league in yards after catch. New England has just seven runs over 10 yards this season. Three of those seven are from Maye scrambling.
I’m not kidding.
Cover 6 kills Drake Maye?… Not so fast, my friend
I also want to go ahead and try to nip the “Drake Maye is bad against Cover 6” narrative in the bud here. It’s been a commonly parroted stat point but, in my opinion, it has a lot of flaws.
Here are all four reps of Cover 6 the Jaguars (an elite defense) ran on Maye Sunday.
All of these are fine reps. Two efficient passes, an explosive, and a 0-yard sack where his receiver fell over. It’s not like he’s reading it poorly.
Maye’s struggles against Cover 6 are almost exclusively a Seattle Seahawks stat. Yes, really. He has struggled in two games against the best defense in the NFL who just happens to run Cover 6 more than twice the second-most team. Per Clevanalytics, Maye’s EPA/Play against C6 vs. all other 30 defenses hovers just over league average and falls to near league-worst against just the Seahawks.
He was creating explosives against Cover 6 all throughout the playoff run last year against two elite defenses in the Chargers and Texans.
It’s just noise, if you ask me. The whole notion is bogus if you just...watch the games.
Drake Maye’s situation is pretty normal
I’ve seen this situation happen numerous times with young quarterbacks, and it’s important to note that Drake Maye is very young. He is the second-youngest (technically the youngest since Jaxson Dart is hurt) starting quarterback in the NFL, even though he's been a starter for three years.
In many ways, Maye’s start reminds me of Trevor Lawrence’s early career with Jacksonville. Lawrence was obviously talented, but the situation around him for many, many years forced him to shoulder the burden of being the entire franchise despite being a 24- and 25-year-old quarterback.
To most people with eyes, it was obvious that Lawrence was succeeding despite his surroundings, but nobody can single-handedly carry a team anymore. Now that Lawrence has Liam Coen in town calling plays and the team has been repaired by general manager James Gladstone, we’re seeing what Lawrence and the Jaguars are truly capable of.
This situation has also played out with Caleb Williams and the Bears, Jared Goff and the Rams, and Josh Allen with the Bills.
I think a similar situation is unfolding with Drake Maye. Schedule this, schedule that; I don’t really care. The quality of throws isn’t diminished, and it’s obvious Maye is fully capable of being a quality franchise quarterback. He carried the team last year to a Super Bowl (it wasn’t the defense) despite having very little around him.
Right now, there’s simply too much on his plate because of the surrounding situation. He isn’t playing particularly poised, but it’s not because he can’t, in my opinion. Maye is just stuck in this pendulum cycle of playing too cautiously and playing too aggressively because he has to be the entire offense. Every mistake is amplified, but so is every missed opportunity.
The biggest issue, in my opinion, that Maye has to fix right now is not compounding mistakes and letting them snowball. It’s a common issue with young quarterbacks, and it’s definitely fixable, but right now Maye is simply making a bad situation worse by trying to force the issue on already broken plays. A couple of plays were fluky interceptions on throwaways, to be sure, but against top defenses (like Seattle and Jacksonville), one mistake turns into multiple as he unravels. This is only made worse by the fact that the Patriots’ success essentially lives and dies by his every throw.
Certainly, Maye has to play better football moving forward. However, he’s also not being helped by his surroundings, so it’s not really fair in my mind to say he’s just completely regressed. Most of the narratives surrounding him are easily debunked, and the film shows a quarterback mostly trying to play “hero ball” and will his offense to generate anything positive.
A.J. Brown’s return will help, no doubt. But I have my doubts that Josh McDaniels is the right coach to truly get the most out of Drake Maye, and his offense isn’t maximizing the players that New England does have, nor is it helping ease the burden on Maye.
It’s a perfect storm right now. The offense lacks any sort of creativity, Rhamondre Stevenson doesn’t have a lot of juice, TreVeyon Henderson’s vision is still very poor, and the offensive line doesn’t generate a lot of push, so they struggle to run the ball to take some of the burden off of Maye.
Maye has to generate the offense himself, but the weapons don’t separate or are too busy doing the salsa off the line of scrimmage to run the route properly, and the offensive line has struggled in one-on-one blocking, so Maye starts pressing. Maye makes a bad decision by forcing the football to try and get anything done or gets sacked, and the whole thing spirals from there.
After this season, I hope the Patriots try to modernize their approach with a new offensive coaching staff. With Maye’s arm talent, I would be very interested in him being matched with J.T. Barrett, given his experience coaching quarterbacks and his integral role with Ben Johnson’s scheme in Chicago and Detroit.
Right now, though, their best bet is going to be banking on getting healthy, as this team misses A.J. Brown and Eli Raridon. I do also think they should be playing fullback Reggie Gilliam more than they are. He was a nifty free agent signing who can help unlock both the run and pass game, but he’s only played 41 snaps in three games.
Drake Maye has to be better for the rest of 2026. But he’s not broken. Let’s have some patience.