In today’s age of anonymous sourcing, Mike Sando’s annual NFL quarterback tiers is among the best preseason presentations out there.
This year, The Athletic polled 50 coaches and executives to gain insight into how the league views the top quarterbacks entering 2026. Thirty-five QBs were ranked and split into tiers, from Tier 1 — ”the team wins because of him” and “there are no holes in his game” — to Tier 5 — ”not an NFL starter, period.”
Sando’s overall top 10 and Tier 1-rated quarterbacks weren’t all that surprising. The player most worth debating is surging New England Patriots star Drake Maye. He just led the Patriots to the Super Bowl at the age of 23, in his first full season as a starter. He was a second-team All-Pro and finished one first-place vote shy of beating out Matthew Stafford for league MVP.
League talent evaluators seem to see what Patriots fans already know to be true: Maye’s precision passing, playmaking ability, and raw upside place him right there with Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen, and the rest of the league’s elite.
It’s the coaches who aren’t yet sold. Per Sando’s polling results, none of the 29 coaches surveyed gave Maye a Tier 1 vote.
“The kid throws a really good go-ball, which will pair well with A.J. Brown,” said a defensive coach whose team, per Sando, faced Maye early in the season. “Maybe it’s his youth, but I think Josh McDaniels does a phenomenal job of packaging things within a game plan to take some of the pressure off of Drake. He can do what they want him to do offensively, but at the same time, how much are they really asking him to do?"
Patriots fans are already reliving the ‘system quarterback’ narrative with Drake Maye
We’ve been here before. Patriots antagonists still cling to the asinine narrative that Tom Brady was a “system quarterback” on his way to seven Super Bowl titles, his first six with the Patriots. Per Sando’s reporting, NFL teams seem to be fearing Josh McDaniels more than Maye at this stage of his career.
It’s early. Maye won’t turn 24 until the end of August. He hasn’t yet worked with a skill position group led by proven producers like A.J. Brown and Romeo Doubs.
And it’s hard for Patriots fans to complain. Maye wound up tied for eighth in The Athletic’s overall rankings, placing him firmly in the upper half of Tier 2 — ”carries his team sometimes; handles pure-passing situations in doses; has a hole or two in his game.”
Should Maye be ranked outside of the top six, behind guys like Justin Herbert and Dak Prescott? Probably not, since he’s already won more playoff games than both of those players combined.
But Maye does have holes in his game, the main one being his tendency to hold onto the football and take negative plays. He took too many sacks during the Patriots’ 2025 run, at times putting added pressure on his struggling offensive line. He put the ball on the ground seven times during the playoffs alone.
“I think most good quarterbacks know how to get rid of the football,” one general manager told Sando.
It’s pretty clear that opposing defensive coordinators don’t yet fear Maye, but the key word there is “yet.” Doubters can point out the Patriots’ easy 2025 schedule all they want. The quarterback still routinely put the football into near-impossible windows, often 20-plus yards downfield.
If 2025 was the introduction, this 2026 season, with more pre-snap command and freedom in Year 2 with McDaniels, could be the statement. Multiple NFL talent evaluators already see what’s coming.
“He’s going to be a 1 very soon,” a personnel exec said. “You know what? Yeah, he’s a 1. Resilient kid, makes plays, underwhelming receiving corps, smart, athletic. Another year with this coordinator, get some big-play guys, I think he’ll be a 1. His makeup and all his football stuff makes me believe he is going to be a good player.”
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