In the aftermath of a tougher-than-expected road win that pushed the New England Patriots to 3-0 in the division, Chad Graff of The Athletic shared a stat that’s often misunderstood by the NFL world.
Especially as it pertains to quarterback Drake Maye and his current standing among the league's elite.
With Maye as their starter, the Patriots improved to 14-0, per Graff, in games where they were favored by 3 or more points. It makes sense, as New England has routinely taken care of business against inferior opponents since Mike Vrabel was hired as head coach in 2025.
Patriots antagonists have often used that stat — also known as “The Schedule” — to belittle the accomplishments of both Maye and the team. The reality, of course, is that no head coach-quarterback combo avoids upsets. It’s why NFL survivor pools have become the epitome of lottery tickets in recent years.
The league literally hangs its hat on parity, like the Cowboys falling to the Cardinals at home on Sunday as 7.5-point favorites, the Texans falling to the Giants at home in Week 7 as 10.5-point favorites, the Rams falling at home to the Cardinals as 13.5-point favorites in Week 6 — it literally happens every week. No team is safe.
Except for the Patriots (knock on wood), who under Vrabel and Maye have been special in that area.
Sunday’s comeback win over Miami may have been the shining example.
Drake Maye deserves credit for making the Patriots' easy wins look routine
The Patriots weren’t ready to go at the start, falling behind 13-3 and finishing the half with under 100 net yards of offense for the first time in Maye’s career.
They didn’t flinch in the face of what would have been a brutal upset loss — with Maye literally posting a perfect passer rating in the second half of a 24-19 win.
Drake Maye was virtually PERFECT in the second half pic.twitter.com/m3KHgxUxzs
— PFF (@PFF) November 2, 2026
That is Drake Maye, a player who in his last 25 games has only lost to Buffalo, Seattle, Jacksonville, and Chicago. Only the loss to Buffalo was played at Gillette Stadium. He obviously wasn’t his best in those losses. In some of them, like the Jaguars game this season, his poor play and turnovers hurt the team.
But he is firmly among the NFL’s elite and back in the MVP conversation entering the second half of the season, and the constant pushback from the NFL world is embarrassing, and has been for a while.
Bleacher Report, for example, handed out grades for all 32 quarterbacks for Week 8. The site gave Malik Willis, the Dolphins QB who had a big interception in the second half and finished with a QB rating that was 49.4 points lower than Maye’s, a “B.” Maye was given a “B+” — the same grade as Patrick Mahomes, whose team botched an 11-point lead in the fourth quarter against Denver and lost.
Make it make sense.
This is nothing new. Patriots fans have been seeing it for two years, and it’s only gotten worse since the Super Bowl. People would rather call Maye a “schedule merchant” than to flip it around and give him proper credit — like mounting a second-half comeback in a divisional road game played in the rain with A.J. Brown, Romeo Doubs, Mack Hollins, Hunter Henry, TreVeyon Henderson, and Alijah Vera-Tucker.
It’s easy to dismiss Maye’s performance as good-not-great because the Dolphins have the NFL’s youngest roster and just dropped to 1-6. Those paying attention know that what Maye just did on Sunday was Josh Allen-esque. He put the Superman cape on and quite literally carried the team to win. Had that been Allen or Mahomes on Sunday, the internet and morning talk shows would be fawning.
The quiet part is that Maye does that a lot more often than folks want to give him credit for. Maybe we're a little biased, but if there was an "A" performance on Sunday, it was Maye carrying the team on his back down 10 points in the second half with an offense completely depleted by injuries.
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