Drake Maye is No. 11 on the NFL's Top 100. And PFF Grades the Patriots' Secondary at No. 1. The League Should Be Afraid. Be VERY Afraid.

How's this for a memory? Arguably the low point of the Bill Belichick Era. The beginning of the end for his Patriots, and possibly NFL, career. Against a team he traditionally wanted to beat more than anyone, but had haunted his dreams repeatedly. Despite his defense giving up only 220 total yards his offense holding the ball for nearly 35 minutes, they managed to find a way to lose. To Tommy DeVito, ironically enough, who posted a passer rating of 103.0 to Mac Jones pitiful 27.8. 

By that point, Belichick's New England were all but over. And four seasons after Tom Brady left, the Dynasty he had built lay in ruins. Its once-mighty works in ashes. The fields that used to be so bountiful, salted beyond the chance of ever producing a harvest again. 

And the rest of the NFL rejoiced at the despair New England was experiencing. And believed it would be this way for generations. Because replacing a figure of Brady's stature was a seemingly impossible task. And as an example, they pointed to Mac Jones himself, who was benched that game (12 for 21, 89 yards, 0 TDs, 2 INTs) and never took another snap as a Patriot. 

That was then. This is now:

Drake Maye is the No. 11 player on the NFL's Top 100. By way of perspective, last season was his first as the full time starter. He missed the MVP race by one vote to Matthew Stafford who, while he had a great season, won it basically as a Lifetime Achievement Award. The Pats offense, which was second in the league in points scored, has significantly upgraded at several key positions. For the first time since he was the redshirt freshman starter at UNC, he does not have to learn the system of a new offensive coordinator. And he's still days away from his 24th birthday. 

And since these are the players still remaining on the Top 100 list:

… that means Maye is the currently considered the third best QB in the NFL, according to everyone in the NFL. And as I'm writing this, Stafford is blowing out 38 birthday candles. Meaning he's on borrowed time.

So deal with that, 31 other teams. You spent 20 years pinning all your hopes and dreams of being rid of this franchise, once and for all. That loss at Met Life seemed like it was making all your wishes come true. Instead, all that missed kick from Chad Ryland was make sure the Pats got the No. 3 overall pick instead the Giants. And resurrected the Dynasty. 

But as my headline indicated, it's not all about Maye. I have more bad news for you:

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This is a top-tier secondary that is only going to get better. The focal point, Christian Gonzalez, allowed a league-low 43.4% completion rate when targeted last season. Rookie safety Craig Woodson put together the best run-defense season of any safety with an 89.7 PFF run-defense grade. He’ll be joined by veteran three-time All-Pro Kevin Byard this season, who led the league with seven interceptions last year. This secondary brings a brilliant blend of youth and experience. New England was the only unit to log four games without a missed tackle last season.

I'm tempted to complain about the lack of a mention of Marcus Jones, who was tied for ninth among all CBs in interceptions last year and has become one of the league's true impact slot corners after years of this team getting flamed by guys like Tyreek Hill on a regular basis. But fine. They edited for length. The point is still well taken that they improved on what was already one of the best secondaries in the NFL. 

One of my summer reading books was Robert L. O'Connell's "The Ghosts of Cannae: Hannibal and the Darkest Hour of the Roman Republic." The "Ghosts" in question being the 10,000 or so Romans soldiers who survived the worst military defeat in Rome's history. The defeat was so monumental and humiliating, there was panic back in the city that the Republic was about to fall. And the survivors were essentially exiled as cowards and traitors for not doing everyone a favor and getting massacred. It took years to agree on a commander who would mount a proper response. Connell writes:

[I]t was a debacle by any measure, so much so that a case can be made that Cannae was even more critical than [historian] Polybius believed, in restrospect a true pivot point in Roman history. … And the talisman of all this change was one lucky survivor, a young military tribune named Publius Conelius Scipio, known to history as Africanus. For at the end of many more years of fighting, Rome still would need a general and an army good enough to defeat Hannibal, and Scipio Africanus, with the help of what remained fo the battlefield's disgraced refugees, would answer the call and in the process, set all else in motion. 

It was 14 years between Cannae and Hannibal's Carthaginian army's final annihilation at the Battle of Zama. It's been 31 months since the end of the 2023 season, when Belichick made it so Mac Jones didn't even dress for the final game, and both were gone for good as the rest of the country mocked New England and declared our Republic destroyed. 

And yet here already we've got our Scipio in Drake Maye. The general who, along with a vastly improved army, is answering the call and turning humiliating defeat into a long and glorious future. 

To Pats fans? All hail. To everyone else? Your worst nightmare has come true.