Patriots’ coaches enter bye week confident Drake Maye can be a franchise quarterback

FOXBOROUGH, Mass. (AP) — Drake Maye’s arrival in New England coincided with a wholesale reset for the Patriots franchise following the departure of coach Bill Belichick and quarterback Mac Jones this past offseason.

In his eight starts since assuming the reins from veteran Jacoby Brissett, the rookie quarterback has provided encouraging examples of what the Patriots’ revamped front office saw in selecting him third overall in the draft last April.

While the Patriots enter their bye week with a 3-10 record and just 2-6 with Maye as the starter, both the coaching staff and his teammates feel they have a quarterback they can build around going forward.

“I’m just trying to take it one day at a time, one game at a time,” Maye said this week. “I’m trying to learn from negative experiences or negative plays, learn from turnovers, learn from sacks that I take and see if I can get the ball out and do something better. That’s probably the biggest thing.

“Hopefully, the work that we’re putting in and the product that we’re putting out can lead to some positive plays and some positive wins down the road.”

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Maye is coming off his best statistical performance of the season, completing a season best 80% of his passes (24 of 30) for a season-high 238 yards and a touchdown in New England’s 25-24 loss to Indianapolis. He also had a 41-yard run, showing off a running ability that has him averaging 9.1 yards per carry – best among quarterbacks who have played at least nine games.

Maye did have one interception off a tipped ball, but showed his best command of offensive coordinator Alex Van Pelt’s scheme to date, spreading the ball around to six different players and consistently getting the Patriots into the red zone.

The rub is that the Patriots were just 2 of 6 once they got there, including four trips inside the 10-yard line that yielded only one TD. Lackluster play in the red zone has been a hindrance for a unit that ranks 30th in the NFL in scoring touchdowns inside the 20.

Maye said it will be one of his main focal points over the final four games.

“It’s tough to go out like that,” Maye said. “You can’t win games going four drives in the red zone that end in field goals. We’ve got to focus in on that. I think that’s been an emphasis of improvement for this offense. We know you have to score touchdowns to win in this league.”

Though coach Jerod Mayo agrees there is room for improvement for Maye, he also pointed out that the pieces around him need to do a better job supporting him as well.

He pointed specifically to the offensive line, singling out rookie left guard Layden Robinson and rookie tackle Caedan Wallace, as well as fellow lineman and 2022 first-round pick Cole Strange, who is working his way back from a knee injury.

“You need a guy like Layden Robinson to show what he can do. We need a guy like Cole Strange before the end of the season to see what he can do,” Mayo said. “You can use Caedan in that same bucket. We need to see what the receivers can do and what they’re going to look like going forward, and that’s the hard part for me. You want to win right now, but at the same time, I think it would be a disservice to go to the end of the season and not know exactly what we have.”

That’s not lost on Robinson, who wants to play better for his quarterback who he said has grown exponentially as a leader since earning the starting job.

“He always has that confidence about him and you know how he takes control of the huddle,” Robinson said. “He gets in there, and he’s like, ‘All right, let’s go to work,’ basically. We rally behind him.”

Results aside, Van Pelt said there are no regrets about initially waiting to elevate Maye to the starting job.

“Absolutely not. I think we had the plan going into place, and I think that it’s showing now that that was a good decision for us,” Van Pelt said. “Would he be as developed had he started the first game? Maybe. Could’ve gone the other way as well. I stated in the spring, this is a marathon, it’s not a sprint.

“This is about a career, franchise quarterback, and we’re trying to develop him in the right way. And I feel like we did it that way.”

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