Success at the quarterback position in the NFL now, for the first time in living memory, has a lot of the same prerequisites as success in the rest of the league.
All the new quarterbacks coming into the league have to be big, fast, smart, and strong.
The quarterback’s general ability to turn chicken shit into chicken salad, at least partly because line play has gone the way of Mike Lombardi’s talent evaluation rather than the way of his ever-expanding ego, is now 80% of the cake rather than the icing.
It goes beyond an on-field requirement as well.
You need to be a spokesperson for a franchise often in a state of disrepair, and more broadly the face of an organisation in trouble.
That’s where the 2024 quarterback class of Caleb Williams, Jayden Daniels, Michael Penix, J.J. McCarthy, Bo Nix, and Drake Maye come in.
Each of the first three picks – Maye, Williams, and Daniels – were so highly regarded because of their ability to create out of structure with freakish athleticism, strong arms, and enough mental acuity to handle the rigors of the NFL.
Maye has been dumped in the most chicken shit of the lot and made it into the best chicken salad.
Through the first month and a half of this season he’s been like Denzel in Highest 2 Lowest, putting in a great performance while surrounded by a mixture of too old, too young, or not good.
Except, instead of just putting in a good performance in a bad film, Maye has made it a best picture contender. Imagine if Denzel made his wife and son in that film, both of whom are not great, into Meryl Streep and the kid from The Shining.
That’s how good he’s been, dragging this Pats team to 4-2.
As a thrower, Maye has every club in his bag. He can drive the ball into tight windows over the middle, has shown this year that he can play underneath, but still hasn’t lost the wild horse in him that says “chuck it deep” in the face of pressure and see what happens.
He’s also a great athlete.
He’s not at the level of Josh Allen in terms of his ability to physically define a game on the ground, but he’s probably around that Justin Herbert level where he can get around just enough to be a threat, while retaining strength through his hips to work through mess in the pocket.
He’s also smart enough to know when to take the shots and hold onto the ball, and when he has to keep the train on the tracks.
His combination of skills means that he can keep the game moving, while retaining enough sizzle in his game to make the downfield passing game a threat.
To underscore the point, Maye is sixth in dropback success rate and fourth in EPA/play.
If we return to the 2024 draft class, the next highest in both EPA/player and success rate is Michael Penix at 15th and 16th, respectively.
Meanwhile, Caleb Williams, the first overall pick in Maye’s draft, is 26th and 30th.
I’ve been through all of this without even mentioning that Maye just beat Josh Allen and the Bills, probably his closest modern comp, last week on Sunday Night Football. In the words of Jose Mourinho, Maye is a special one.
But context makes him more special.
Robert Kraft is a cheap owner.
Just ask Bill Belichick.
And even when building around a rookie quarterback, whose cheap contract is the best asset for an NFL team to have, he hasn’t sunk enormous resources into the on-field talent.
The Pats are 20th in cash spending in 2025.
That’s the second lowest among the teams that drafted quarterbacks in the first round in 2024 and are theoretically on the same quarterback contract timeline as the Patriots.
If you confine it to just the offensive side of the ball, the Pats are 25th, last among the 2024 quarterback drafters.
Granted the Pats have the most cap space in the NFL heading into next season, but that just says to me that, even with an extremely easy schedule, next year was meant to be the year to compete for a playoff spot.
You can feel the lack of investment on the field, his best receiver is the 31 year old Stefon Diggs off an ACL.
His most reliable target is Hunter Henry and Kayshoun Boutte, the 187th overall pick in 2023, is the great hope at X-receiver.
The running game is last in EPA/play, second last in success rate and the lead running back is the most prolific fumbler in the league.
Defensively as well, the Pats are aggressively mediocre, they’re 22nd in success rate and 27th in EPA/play.
This is not dropping a quarterback into a perfect ecosystem like the Chiefs did with Patrick Mahomes in 2018.
This is dropping him into the John Wick nightclub scene without a gun and telling him to kill everyone in sight.
And he has.
I will grant you that the coaching this year is better than it was last.
Simon Goodwin after a few quiet ones at the Sorrento Hotel probably would have done a better job than Jerod Mayo last year.
Mike Vrabel is far beyond that, he’s elite
Vrabel is probably the best bespoke game-planning coach in the league, but other than that there’s not going to be a queue for Patriots’ assistants in the offseason.
Clearly that helps, as the team is intense and well-prepared across both sides of the ball.
But he’s not the one on the tools with Maye day-to-day and down-to-down.
Josh McDaniels is a very good offensive co-ordinator and he’s shown it again.
He’s built a solid infrastructure based around principles he already knows.
He’s meshed the Tom Brady world of timing-based underneath passing patterns with the Cam Newton, power-spread world.
It’s been a fusion of flashdance and MC Hammer shit.
But, game to game, he’s well below the elite playcallers like Kyle Shanahan and Sean McVay and is never going to get another head coaching job because his personality has been generally repellent to players.
Nonetheless Maye has excelled under his tutelage, making him only the second quarterback that can be said for in McDaniels’ career.
If a prerequisite of the modern quarterback to make chicken shit out of chicken salad, both in a macro and a micro sense, then Drake Maye is Gordon Ramsay just before Boiling Point.
Even though the Patriots aren’t ready to win it all yet, Maye is.
And through sheer force of will, there’s no reason to put a ceiling on him now.