Let's Have a Family Meeting to Discuss What it's Going to Take to Fix Drake Maye

Yup. Times are tough. There's no question about it. As the great Norman Dale put it before the Indiana High School Athletic Association finals, "We're way past Big Speech Time here, fellas." No one's coming to save the 2026 Patriots. The solution to our problems isn't on Injured Reserve, or someone else's roster, or the NCAA. It's going to be taking the field in Buffalo Sunday, or the next week at home against the Raiders, or perhaps not at all. 

But as Ben Hogan used to say about fixing your horrendous golf game, "The secret's in the dirt." Meaning, get to the practice range, put in the work, and figure it out. Which is precisely what everyone in the organization needs to do with regards to Drake Maye.

Which is why I've gathered you all together. So we can address his issues and find the solutions. 

Here are some suggestions, beginning in the only logical place, with Coach Gruden, who if he ever forgot anything about quarterbacking (he doesn't), would've already forgotten more than you or I will ever know. To him, it's all about Maye needing to be way less aggressive, and way more willing to hit the easy throws:

Correction: He calls Kyle Williams "Wilson," but that minor detail doesn't make him wrong about that interception Maye threw to him. The route was trash. As I mentioned in the Knee Jerk Reaction Monday morning, Troy Brown was on TV questioning Wilson's Williams' route running any time he's not just taking off on a vertical Go. And there he never shook the coverage, and that's a ball that should've gone to the bunch side of the 3x1. In every other example Gruden cites of Maye's interceptions, there was an easier checkdown available, or even a throwaway to live another day.

One key to the most successful Patriots teams ever, was their willingness on defense to concede the safer underneath stuff all day long. "Bend but don't break" would test your patience to the limit sometimes, as they'd let some journeyman like Matt Flynn or Rex Grossman pass for 300 yards and put 27 up on them. But they did so knowing  not many offenses will be willing to keep that up. To kill you with a thousand paper cuts. Sooner or later, they'd pull out the 30.06 and try to blow your head off, and make a mistake that costs them the game. 

After being so damned near close to perfect on deep balls last year, Maye seems too willing to shoot those shots again. Josh McDaniels has to reign that instinct in for now. To go back to the Brady Era philosophy that says you'll never go broke taking a profit. Work in more Slants, Jukes, Hitches, and Crossers. And above all else, be willing to settle for the field goal in the red zone and the punt in the middle of the field. And stop being reckless.

Dan Orlovsky meanwhile, is seeing a different guy from a fundamentals standpoint than the one we saw last year:

Personally, my expertise is less in quarterback bio-mechanics than it is being able to take any movie title and come up with it's XXX parody equivalent. ("Project Male-Hairy," "Backdoor Rooms," "Goodwill Humping," etc.) But it doesn't take Sean McVay to see something has been off with Maye's throws. So many of his 20+ yard attempts have seemed to be off his back foot. Throwing fall-away jumpers instead of sticking his right toe in the turf and stepping into it. Orlovsky's observation that it's about not bending his knee seems as plausible to a layman as anything else. A proper knee bend has always been a key or anything you do athletically, from swinging a bat to throwing a punch to winning a Survivor challenge. This is a reminder that the biggest knock on Maye coming out of UNC was his footwork. Maybe it's as simple as him regressing and needing a re-readjustment. 

But then again, as far as the turnovers, all begins and ends with the decsion-making. And more golf metaphors:

While Greg Cosell - who does as good an analysis of college prospects as anyone - reminds us it's not all on Maye:

That without AJ Brown, he lacks that boundary-X receiver you can count on to win the one-on-ones, and be open even when he's covered. Again, getting back to Wilson Williams, "the corner ran the route for him," and you can't throw that ball. So it's incumbent upon Maye and McDaniels to get away from expecting him to. That big gain by Williams looked to be a deep cross, where he broke off his route to come back across the field to mirror Maye when it turned into a scramble drill:

He's a unique talent. And the trick is to utilize the skills he does have, not the ones you wish he did because Brown has them. 

Then there's Ryan Fitzpatrick and Andrew Whitworth, who are seeing an offense grown stale:

The part of this I found most on point was the part about plays where both tackles are diving low at their blocking assignment, which means the play is designed to get the ball out quickly. Obviously. Because when you're lying with your facemask in the ground, it's not exactly conducive to sustained blocking. And yet, time and again we've seen Maye holding the ball while Edge rushers are stepping over his blocker's butt cheeks. That's a indicative of an entire offense out of sync. Of a hot route that's not open. And no secondary option to go to. 

And in case you're prone to fall back on the narrative that the cheat code on Maye is simply to run a Cover-6 because he hasn't figured it out, the data suggests otherwise:

Source - There have been theories thrown around to explain Maye's turnover-heavy start to 2026. I've heard that he can't "solve" Cover 6, a two-high coverage that has Cover 2 to one side and Cover 4 to the other. I'll snuff out that theory right away: Maye has absolutely no issues against Cover 6. The numbers thrown around are weighted heavily by facing the Seahawks twice, a team that runs Cover 6 more than anybody and, oh yeah, was one of the best defenses on record last season. …

There is a theme of the Seahawks dominating with their Cover 6 because it completely wipes out the Patriots' preferred formations and concepts. But, even if you include those two Seahawks matchups, Maye has been about league average in terms of success rate against teams in Cover 6; his 46% dropback success rate is just above the league average of 45.4% since the start of last year, including the playoffs. That mark is above Lamar Jackson, Dak Prescott, Caleb Williams, Joe Burrow and Brock Purdy, for instance. And his explosive pass rate (13.8%) is just below league-average and just below Trevor Lawrence.

And to echo what I said in a breakdown earlier this week:

… schematically the Pats have been a mess. From being predictable, to the pass protection, to getting receivers tripping over each other in the same area of the secondary, to a lack of efficiency all around:

Source - 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. …

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. 

So to wrap this up, the problem with the McOffense is:

Giphy Images.

That's not to exonerate Maye. He's the guy who has the ball in his hands every play, bloodied or not, and needs to make better judgments when he decides to get it to somebody else. To settle for less when the situation calls for it. And remember that he's never going to walk off the field while the field goal unit or punt team comes on saying "The choice to throw it into the cheerleaders just cost us the game." But the decision to shoehorn it in to a blanketed Efton Chism in the endzone will. And just did. 

But everyone else needs to up their game, starting immediately. From McDaniels to the bottom of the depth chart. Just like they did last year when they avoided going 0-3 in Buffalo. 

But then again, there might only be one hope. And that's an appeal to an even higher power than Maye.