We've Entered the 'He Has Problems With His Coaches' Hysteria Phase of Drake Maye's Career
Winslow Townson. Getty Images.We've all had a couple of days now to sift through the wreckage of the Sunday's Patriots game at Jacksonville to search for survivors look for the cause of the crash.
And leave it to the FAA investigators in the media to find the same black box they always managed to pull out of the fuselage whenever things went wrong in the past. You've been considering this version of the Pats to be Dynasty 2.0?
Welcome to Riff 2.0.
For those of you nostalgic for the days all the talk about how Tom Brady and Bill Belichick were fed up with each other. When Brady was supposed to frustrated with whomever his offensive coordinator was at the time. And when Belichick reportedly was sick of his bellyaching and ready to replace him with Jimmy Garoppolo, or allegedly believed he could still go 12-4 with Johnny Foxboro from the local high school, you're in luck.
Happy days are here again for you.
The morning show that Mike Vrabel is contractually obligated to appear on wasted no time reporting the "whispers" they're hearing from inside the building. Which is to say, they wasted the time Vrabel was actually sitting between them by not bringing it up. But since he went back to his office to plan for Buffalo, they're blowing that whistleblower's whistle:
While they're hearing things, down the street Mike Felger is smelling things. Specifically, a rat.
Maye, it seems, is complaining about his coaches. To whom? To his agent at CAA. Who is telling Dan Orlovsky's agent down the hall at CAA:
Who then ran down another hall and knocked on the door of Colin Cowherd's CAA agent to spill the tea that Maye doesn't like Josh McDaniels:
And for their part, the coaching staff doesn't get why Maye is talking about his shoulder when his shoulder is not the issue. The passes his shoulder throws is:
Advertisement
And round and round we go. The Patriots QB/coaches is once again an Ouroboros, eating its own tail. Just like it was from 2001-19.
Now I guess this is the part where I'm supposed to argue this isn't happening. Or to point out how during all those years when Brady and Belichick were fighting like Michael Vick's dogs, that all this team did was win. Like some of the great teams across all sports that feed off the chaos and use it to fuel their success. The 1990s Cowboys. 1970s Raiders. The great Yankees teams. The Pistons of the championship era. The Charleston Chiefs. So this is a good thing.
But I'm not going to play to type. Not this time. And would you like to know why?
Giphy Images.I just don't have it in me any more. I'm a broken man right now. All the Krafts' horses and all the Krafts' men can't put me back together again.
We went through this with Brady, and it finally came to a head in 2020. In humiliating fashion. Through some sort of divine intervention, we got the quarterback who seemed like the perfect replacement for him in Mac Jones the very next year. Within a season, Belichick seethed with resentment toward him. The two stopped talking. And we were destined to wander in the wilderness for another football generation.
Then a miracle happened. We got exactly the Franchise QB I wanted. Then the right head coach and coordinator, both of whom I'd asked for. It worked out beyond even my wildest, cheeriest, most rose colored dreams, in one magical season that almost ended in triumph. A runner up MVP season. A Coach of the Year award.
Now we're just three weeks into Year 2 of this Dynasty reboot and it's all about riffs and whispers and rats and befuddlement. About who's right and who's wrong. And I just don't have the strength to go through it all again so soon.
If this is the case, fuck it. Let's not drag this out for a bunch more seasons. Skip the drama. Spare us all the denials. Let's just file for divorce. Take the case before Judge Kraft and let him rule on who gets custody of the football team. Then make it final. Either we rebuild this thing so it can compete in perpetuity around a great young QB or under a great coach. But I can't go through another era wasting all our time worrying about their interpersonal relationship.
Coaches have dumped great quarterback before. Bill Walsh did it to Joe Montana. Quaterbacks have gotten coaches fired. Peyton Manning, Brett Favre and Aaron Rodgers being examples. And every name I just mentioned is in the Hall of Fame, or will be, because they won anyway. So just make a decision and move on.
If this is what being 1-2 does to us, I shudder to think how bad it will be after they lose in Buffalo.