What are we doing here?
This weird media crusade on New England Patriots quarterback Drake Maye was embarrassing a while ago, but it’s reaching absurd new heights following his latest monster stat lines.
In Week 4, Maye broke out of his early-season funk. He traded punches with current MVP favorite Josh Allen, and led the Patriots to a season-saving win in Buffalo. The commentary from Patriots reporter Greg Bedard and others was that the Bills were too bad on defense to take Maye’s game-winning drive (with the undrafted Efton Chism III as his main target) seriously.
The noise has somehow ratcheted up after Maye torched a Las Vegas Raiders defense that entered the week ranked top-five in sacks and No. 1 overall in defensive takeaways.
You would think five total touchdowns, no turnovers, one sack taken, and a 150.9 QB rating would quiet some of the discourse, but it’s been just the opposite. Patriots fans continually find themselves defending the fact that they've found another undisputed franchise quarterback.
The top antagonists, like Bedard, continue to tweak the fans by creating storylines aimed at knocking Maye down a peg.
The latest Drake Maye criticism requires ignoring what makes him special
Bedard’s latest for Boston Sports Journal was… something. His headline says it all: Drake Maye was great again vs. a low-rated pass defense, how does that compare to others?
He went on to compare his own personal film grades for Maye against how each team he faced ranked in pass DVOA. He then took it a step further in an effort to drive his point home, comparing the 24-year-old quarterback head-to-head with Allen and reigning MVP Matthew Stafford.
“I decided to compare Maye to Matthew Stafford and Josh Allen,” Bedard wrote. “Even though my grades factor in Maye's scrambling ability, I decided to take that out of the equation because it's not fair to Stafford, an older pocket quarterback. Plus, I think when it comes to winning championships (when you have to go through the best defenses), a quarterback's ability to operate from the pocket and throw the ball becomes paramount. That being said, I included the athletic Allen to give Maye a fairer comparison.”
The big conclusion? Maye is doing the majority of his damage against weaker pass defenses, and thus shouldn’t be put in the same MVP-level tier as Allen, Stafford, Patrick Mahomes, etc.
Shocker.
Maye literally falling one first-place vote short of winning MVP last year apparently doesn’t count for anything, but that’s not really the point here.
The point is that the antagonists are trying way too hard. Maye has played 35 games in his career. He turned 24 on Aug. 30. He undisputedly played at an MVP level last year while the Patriots ripped off 10 consecutive wins during the regular season.
That’s not normal in the NFL. Young quarterbacks rarely play at such an elite level with that kind of week-to-week consistency, even if every game is against the Cardinals, Titans, Dolphins, and Jets. Maye spent his rookie season navigating a disaster under Jerod Mayo and offensive coordinator Alex Van Pelt. He spent the majority of 2025 dominating with the aging Stefon Diggs and Hunter Henry as his top targets.
Patriots fans don't need to apologize for believing in Drake Maye
Patriots fans shouldn’t have to constantly defend Maye. They’re allowed to be excited about their quarterback being in MVP discussions and starting in the Super Bowl. Even in the roughest (and most critiqued) stretch of Maye’s career — the wild-card round of the 2025 playoffs to Week 4 this year in Jacksonville — the Patriots went 4-3 over those seven games.
Maye’s start to 2026 was obviously rough. The fourth quarter in the season opener against Seattle, and the entire game against the Jaguars, featured some of the worst throws and decision-making of his career to date.
But it’s the quarterback’s job to exploit weaknesses in the defenses he faces. Maye has done that about as well as any quarterback aged 23 to 24 that we’ve seen in a generation. Why are we constantly creating ways to spin that as a negative? Because Patriots fans have to be put in their place or something?
What Bedard and others are doing is pretzel-twisting at its finest. A caller on 98.5 The Sports Hub this week pointed out that Mahomes and the Chiefs had trouble with the Raiders in Week 4, a game Kansas City won 30-27. Bedard mostly dismissed the caller, saying that divisional matchups should be judged differently.
That’s fair. But Bedard also routinely questions the credibility of Maye’s MVP run in 2025 based on how Stafford looked against Seattle’s elite defense in the NFC Championship Game. The Rams and Seahawks play in the same division. Maye faced them for the first time in Super Bowl LX. But OK, whatever.
It is what it is. No one can bring themselves to admit what Maye is — a young, ascending quarterback who’s on a trajectory to be one of the NFL’s best overall players over the next three-to-five years.
Fact, not opinion.
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