To call the New England Patriots offense a problem would be a massive understatement. Through five games, the Patriots passing offense has racked up 85 more total yards than Kirk Cousins had on his own in Week 5.
New England has yet to throw for more than 150 net passing yards in a single game. It’s why the team is 1-4 even after a visit from a Miami Dolphins team reduced to starting Tyler Huntley behind center. While this is all very good for the team’s 2025 NFL Draft position, it’s the latest step in a stunning de-evolution in Massachusetts. In five years, the Pats have gone from Tom Brady to Cam Newton to Mac Jones to whatever this is.
So, with few weapons to speak of, one of the league’s worst offensive lines and just a few drops of hope yet to be spilled from the bottle, it appears time for a change. After reassuring reporters that Jacoby Brissett was his QB1 throughout the first month-plus of 2024, head coach Jerod Mayo is hinting Week 6 could be time for rookie Drake Maye’s first start as a New England Patriot.
“Look, we’re still going through the, you know, the film from yesterday,” Mayo announced during his Monday morning press conference when asked whether Maye would see action in Week 6. “We’ll see how it goes.”
This is, objectively, a bad situation. It’s also one that needs to happen at some point in 2024. It makes sense it would come before the Pats are fully locked out of the playoff equation. There’s already plenty to taint Maye’s situation; a half-empty home stadium and defeated locker room won’t help.
Keeping Maye on the bench so he wouldn’t get crushed behind an offensive line starting Vederian Lowe and Demontrey Jacobs at tackle was sensible, but it also put him in a massive disadvantage when it comes to his peers. Maye’s draft slot puts him in a tier alongside Caleb Williams and Jayden Daniels. The former already set the Chicago Bears record for most 300-plus yard passing games as a rookie. The latter is an honest-to-god MVP candidate a month into his NFL career.
Maye, on the other hand, has played 16 NFL snaps. He’s thrown eight passes. When he takes the wheel in 2024, he won’t be throwing to D.J. Moore or Terry McLaurin. He’ll have Demario Douglas and, maybe, Kendrick Bourne.
He’ll be playing behind an offensive line that allows pressure on nearly half its dropbacks — a 48.3 percent rate that’s worst in the league and seven points higher than the third place Los Angeles Chargers. Only the Cleveland Browns, with a broken quarterback of their own, have given up more sacks than New England’s 19. He’ll throw to a receiving corps led by Hunter Henry, the tight end whose 180 yards are a team high and rank 66th in the NFL.
This is all very unfair to a first year quarterback. That undermanned roster serves one benefit; it’s going to lose a lot of games and provide the draft capital necessary for a fast infusion of young talent. In that regard, throwing a quarterback who might throw more than three deep completions in five weeks (Brissett had two vs. the Dolphins to triple his season total) may be a detriment.
Worrying about the bad, however, is a moot point in a season that’s served up so much of it in such a short amount of time.
2024 has been a disaster for the Patriots. The rebuilt offensive line is in shambles. Rhamondre Stevenson, counted on to be the engine that pushes this weakened offense forward, has fumbled four times in five games. Christian Barmore and David Andrews, two stalwarts on either side of the line, are out for the season along with key linebacker Ja’Whaun Bentley. Jabrill Peppers, one of the final reclamation projects of the Bill Belichick era and a team captain, was arrested Saturday on assault and drug possession charges.
It feels unfair to say this in the first week of October, but it’s nonetheless true. This is a lost season for the Patriots. The utility in the team’s final dozen games is merely setting the chessboard for 2025 and ironing out the wrinkles in what’s been an uneven start to Mayo’s head coaching career (New England committed 12 penalties Sunday, though at least one was a botched call).
Thus, it makes sense for Maye to be the fourth rookie quarterback to start a game in 2024. He doesn’t have to be good — in fact, the Pats may be better off in the long run if he fails to squeak out the kind of upset wins that come with stable, inspired play. He just has to prove he can make the kind of downfield throws that define success in the NFL.
He did that in the preseason:
This touchdown was negated by (ANOTHER) penalty on Okorafor, but what. a. throw by Drake Maye pic.twitter.com/gPxLgkY0fT
— Ben Brown 🌻 (@BenBrownPL) August 26, 2024
The one good thing about New England’s horrid start is that expectations, even with the rest of his rookie class thriving, are nearly subterranean. The bad thing is we’ve seen promising young quarterbacks undone by terrible blocking, whether that’s been Robert Griffin III hung out to dry by the combination of an unsustainable sack rate and ineffective medical staff or the too-battered-to-reach-their-potential careers of David Carr and Tim Couch.
That leaves Mayo to balance risk and reward in a season that, for the most part, has taken residence in the former category. Maye is going to get hit a ton. He’s going to throw to one of the NFL’s worst receiving corps. He’s going to get little quarter from a run game that, at 22nd-best in the league, is the best thing going for this unit.
But if he throws a pretty deep ball and covers some spreads, he’ll give the Patriots and their fans something to root for in 2024. That’s enough justification to toss him into the fire before the season gets out of hand.