There's something about Drake
A chat with T.C. McCartney, the man who coached New England Patriots QB Drake Maye his entire rookie season, sheds light on what makes this MVP candidate special.
Fear is palpable. Fear is spreading.
His long ball is a picturesque rainbow. His accuracy is to the inch. His daredevil improvisation renders a perfect defensive call nil. Execs. Coaches. Players. Everyone in the NFL who’s been tortured by one New England Patriots quarterback for two decades is universally slack-jawed at the rise of another. In unison, you can almost hear the rest of the NFL saying the same four words.
They did it again.
Drake Maye is that talented.
All in Foxborough are predictably lavish with their praise. Back to September, current Patriots explained why he’s special. But perhaps the best indicator that Maye is built to last is what you’ll hear from those who no longer call Massachusetts home. Specifically, those coaches fired on Maye’s first staff. It’s the damndest thing, isn’t it? Critics of explosive stories in our Go Long world are so quick to dismiss anything a fired coach has to say as #SourGrapes. They’ve got an #AxeToGrind. Of course, those who choose to read beyond X screenshots access the vivid detail and insight gleaned from such sources. This league isn’t all unicorns and puppies.
Well, here’s a quarterbacks coach who lasted all of one season with the Patriots.
A coach who wasn’t even lucky enough to latch on with another NFL team.
A coach who could be bitter.
And yet, the way T.C. McCartney speaks about Drake Maye? You’d think they were blood.
Drake Maye, the leader. Drake Maye, the quarterback. Drake Maye, the human. He could talk for hours because McCartney witnessed signs of greatness in this 2024 third overall pick.
“Drake is one of the best people I’ve ever met,” McCartney says. “He’s always trying to do the right thing — with little regard for anything else — in all areas of life.”
Years from now, we may look back at 2025 as the birth of another Patriots all-timer.
Perhaps there will books and documentaries documenting what’s happening before our very eyes.
Maye has the opportunity to make Sunday afternoon an MVP moment. His 11-2 Patriots host the reigning MVP: Josh Allen. Dethrone the Buffalo Bills in the AFC East — then demoralize two-time MVP Lamar Jackson the next week? — and the Vegas odds will tilt in Maye’s favor. The road to the Super Bowl may go through Foxborough. You know, like old times. Everything’s ahead of schedule.
And to understand this all, it’s instructive to look back at a ‘24 season that probably won’t be chronicled in those docs.
McCartney worked with Maye day-in, day-out and sees no reason why the 6-foot-4 ½, 227-pounder from North Carolina cannot dominate the sport for the next 10 to 15 years.
“How fast he’s put this together this year?” the coach says. “He’s going to be in that MVP conversation every year. He’s that type of player.”
And then McCartney explains exactly why…
Go Long is your home for longform in pro football.
Here’s our previous features on TreVeyon Henderson escaping demons and sleep paralysis, as well as PATRIOT REIGN.
Toughness
Quarterbacks are drafted in the Top 5 for a reason.
Their new team stinks.
The Fall of Bill Belichick’s empire was uh, well, filthy as seeing a senior citizen date a girl in her 20s.
McCartney, the new QBs coach in town, saw immense value in Maye biding his time. This roster was quite obviously devoid of talent. The last thing he wanted to do was stunt the development of a young quarterback. When those above his pay grade decided it was time for Maye to start on Oct. 13, he was admittedly concerned. The Houston Texans were in the midst of building the most tenacious defense in the NFL. Will Anderson Jr. and Danielle Hunter could’ve packed a body bag with them on their 2,000-mile flight north.
There was pain. Maye absorbed a flurry of vicious hits. On my trip to Houston this week, the team’s defensive coordinator (Matt Burke) still remembered that beating. Those Texans demolished the overmatched Pats, 41-21. But with 16 seconds left in the first half, the rookie delivered a 40-yard TD that hinted at everything to come.
Up close, McCartney saw Maye’s response to eight hits, four sacks and three turnovers.
Maye barely reacted.
“He didn’t blink, even though he’s getting blasted,” McCartney says. “Unfazed. Physical toughness, mental toughness. He just kept it pushing and onto the next series and wanted to know what we’re going to call.”
This proved to be a mentally taxing season. Whenever Maye dazzled, disappointment quickly followed. In Nashville, he supplied the most preposterous touchdown strike of the season to force OT with 0:00 on the clock… only to lose to the lowly Tennessee Titans.
All along, he never broke. Never stormed away from coaches in disgust or went mute in meetings. After a crushing play, McCartney would give the quarterback two minutes on the sideline to digest that play on his own. Maye always wanted to look at those pictures by himself— first. All he needed were those two minutes to consume a fumble, a sack, a pick, and then he moved on. The two talked.
“I never really saw him frustrated,” McCartney says. “He kept pushing. That’s probably the natural-born confidence he has in himself.”
Maye dissected plays with veteran Jacoby Brissett.
McCartney interjected when required.
The coach knows his staff is the butt of jokes, but he saw Maye grow through the turbulence.
Processing
Most rookie quarterbacks see the game in grainy static. Everything’s chaotic. Rushed.
Drake Maye played in 4D. His head wasn’t spinning. His eyes weren’t darting all over the field. He never seemed particularly nervous at all.
Why? McCartney believes there are two types of “processing” in pro football and that Maye is already mastering both.
“Pre-snap is your mental bandwidth and traditional intelligence. He’s elite at that,” McCartney says. “He can memorize play calls. He can study tape. He’s going to have the right answer going into it. He can get everything done before the snap. But then he is also elite post-snap, which is more spatial processing. The ability to see things happen as they’re happening or before they’re happening. The ability to anticipate. He’s elite at that, too.”
His NFL-high 71.5 completion percentage this season is the product of both. Maye isn’t dinkin’ and dunkin’ and padding this stat with checkdowns as evident by a yards per attempt number (8.8) that ranks second-best in the NFL. It’s also worth noting he’s carving defenses up without a top-flight wide receiver.
Defenses often cloak their true intentions until after the snap, forcing quarterbacks to react in a split-second.
Which is precisely when young quarterbacks struggle so much against veteran defensive playcallers.
They’re expecting one coverage, see quite another, hesitate for a second and get sacked. Or force a ball into heavy traffic. Something bad happens.
This week, a hearty “pure progressions” debate raged across the NFL. It can certainly help a young quarterback to progress through a predetermined order of eligible receivers. This way, it doesn’t matter what a defense is playing. Vikings OC Wes Phillips detailed the merits of such an approach at his weekly press conference, noting how hard it is for young quarterback to figure out what a defense is doing coverage-wise. Still, it’s as true now as it was in any era. The quarterbacks who can genuinely decode a defense will have the edge long term. That’s what Patriots OC Josh McDaniels believes, and that’s why he’s been hard on Maye since Day 1.
New England asks Maye to handle protections pre-snap and read coverages post-snap.
Learning the position this way allows a quarterback to get to an area faster than methodically transitioning from 1… to 2… to 3… to 4. Hall of Famer Kurt Warner and ex-Patriots QB Brian Hoyer both made strong points on this front. Warner argues that quarterbacks must read and attack “areas” of the field.
McCartney agrees that it’s very difficult to straight-up teach a quarterback how to read defenses after the snap because coordinators brilliantly blend coverages on the back end. One side of a defense could show Cover 3. The other could show Cover 2. All while DBs cheat this way or that way to bait your eyes the wrong direction. There’s too much funny business to keep straight.
Simply, the best of the best possess an innate feel. Warner’s came from throwing 1,320 balls in the Arena Football League. Everything was condensed. Everything transpired at warp speed. By the time, the St. Louis Rams asked him to play hero in the wake of Trent Green’s 1999 injury, he was ready.
In New England, coaches realized Maye possessed a similar instinctual feel in OTAs of his rookie year. Even through all the losing, McCartney could tell Maye was the rare quarterback capable of reading the field “peripherally.”
In a split-second, he’d digest all coverages, all blitzes, all madness happening at once.
“Over the course of an NFL season,” McCartney explains, “there’s going to be so many different types of defenses and disguises that you must have the ability to read space. So if I can put your eyes in the right place and you’re able to read space and see how these windows are opening up and the different coverages — whether it’s man, zone, one-high, two-high, within the context of what you’re seeing — he has that ability do that. Joe Burrow was that way.”
McCartney can relate because he was a quarterback himself who lacked this sixth sense at LSU.
Oh, he tried. He trained himself to put his eyes in the right spot. But there’s a major difference between learning where your eyes should go in a Wednesday Quarterback Meeting and then actually making the play when the proverbial bullets fly on a field. He remembers thinking that Drew Lock had a real chance to make it as a rookie because, as a Broncos assistant, McCartney saw the Mizzou rookie reading space at an advanced level.
Thing is, zipping the ball from Point A to Point B requires more than the mind.
Maye has the entire package.
Physical gifts
All A+ traits were on display at North Carolina and through pre-draft workouts. Arm strength. Speed. Athleticism. These genes are elite. Dad played college football at North Carolina from 1983- ’88. One brother, Luke, is a UNC basketball legend after drilling a game-winner in the Elite 8 of the team’s 2017 title season. Another, Beau, briefly played hoops for the Tar Heels. Another, Cole, played baseball at the University of Florida. Drake was the runt of the litter, fighting 24/7 for respect in his own house.
Ryan Poles, the Bears GM, was no fan. His chest hurt watching film. Nonetheless, Maye created the sort of off-platform magic this league covets. In this year’s first Patriots-Bills game, Maye stiff-armed 320-pound DaQuan Jones with his left arm while firing a 12-yarder to Stefon Diggs with his right.
Pick any of New England’s 11 wins. You’ll find a trapeze act.
At New Orleans, Maye froze the defense with his eyes — fixating on a receiver screen to Diggs — before climbing into a collapsing pocket and flinging a 29-yard TD to Kayshon Boutte up the left sideline. Another play, he went full Pete Maravich with a nifty flip to TreVeyon Henderson before getting crunched. Deep shots vs. Cleveland and the New York Giants are dropped into the bucket. On fourth and goal with 2 seconds left in the first half at Tampa Bay, he places the ball where Diggs, and Diggs only, can catch it. That same game, on third and 7, he eludes 350-pound Vita Vea with an olé that typically requires a minimum four IPAs on the wedding dance floor.
All fun. But the one physical aspect of Maye’s game that popped to McCartney? The touch on his ball. He calls his ball “tremendously catchable.”
Too often, us hopeless romantics fall in love with rocket launchers. Elway. Marino. Favre. Vick. Allen.
Too often, a quarterback’s longer release is deemed a negative.
Maye bucks convention.
In Denver, McCartney also worked with the ageless Joe Flacco. Their throwing motions aren’t the same but both Flacco and Maye have longer releases. For years, we’ve been told this is a red flag — Tim Tebow brought a sun dial to the pros. A longer windup, however, allows both to alter their arm angles mid-throw. In the process of throwing a pass, Maye can put a little more speed on a ball or take a little speed off. Quarterbacks with a quicker release, conversely, cannot adjust this late in the game. Once they decide to throw? The ball’s out. Last-millisecond tweaks are impossible.
“The guys with a little longer release,” McCartney says, “can make split-second decisions on how that ball’s going to come out. I remember Flacco being able to do that a lot, and I think Drake has a lot of that in him, too.”
If the coverage is tight, he’ll add the necessary RPMs. But whether he’s layering a throw over a linebacker, side-arming a crosser in stride or going deep, so many of Maye’s passes have a way of gently feathering into the fingertips of receivers. It’s a gorgeous sight and it’s all rooted in his mechanics.
Watch Maye on Sunday. Many times, he’ll come to a complete stop in the middle of a throw… pump fake… and then find a better option.
He’s got the big arm. But he clearly takes a golf-like approach to quarterbacking. Each throw demands a different club. Maye sees no need to use a driver in the rough or around the greens.
His pass catchers are extremely grateful.
Last month, Diggs revealed he’s playing with a broken finger and made a point to thank Maye for the way he throws the football.
Tight end Austin Hooper praised Maye’s “very, very catchable football” on the Next Pats Podcast and took it one step further. He added that the quarterback also understands his route runners all have different “body mechanics.” Boutte, for example, stops his route differently than Hooper. “Each player kind of has their own subtle, nonverbal tells,” Hooper continued, “and Drake’s such a smart guy, he understands all these things. He’s able to put it in the right spot for every type of pass catcher, whether it’s a larger tight end or it’s Pop Douglas, a very explosive, twitched-up receiver.”
IQ
Football aside, Drake Maye is one of the most intelligent people in the Patriots building. That’s no hyperbole. McCartney said as much toward the end of that ’24 season to the local media.
He stands by that proclamation and supplies an example.
When Maye sees a play on tape, he’s able to visualize what it’ll look like on the field.
“Because it’s not the same,” McCartney says. “You could show a quarterback something on tape, and when they get out there, they don’t recognize it because it doesn’t quite look the same. It’s not that same bird’s eye view. I think he does a very good job of being able to see that on tape and then visualize what that’s going to look like from behind center.”
The ’24 staff didn’t want to put too much on the rookie’s plate. Their focus was footwork. Fundamentals. Calibrating eyes to feet to the acute timing of routes downfield in a way Maye never had to play in the ACC. Ex-OC Alex Van Pelt once worked with Packers head coach Mike McCarthy, who put all of his QBs through a popular “quarterback school” that drilled such details.
The ’25 staff hasn’t harped on this stuff nearly as much. Rather, McDaniels’ system is much, much, much more mentally taxing. He wants his QB to have all answers pre-snap.
So while outsiders might’ve viewed Maye’s rookie season as a waste, the truth is he received the best of both worlds. All of the above matters. McCartney is close to current Patriots QBs coach Ashton Grant and cannot say enough about their entire staff. Initially, he thought Maye would need a full year to get acclimated to such a complex offense. Turns out, Maye’s even smarter than he thought.
Leader
That processing sold McCartney. There was something else different about this quarterback, too.
Despite his age, despite all turbulence, Drake Maye never retreated into a state of seclusion or panic or blamed a soul. He took total ownership of a beleaguered team. McCartney calls him a “natural-born leader.” Nothing is forced.
“People are naturally drawn to him,” McCartney says. “He grew up with all those brothers. A very competitive environment. He’s competitive. He’s tough. People are drawn to that. He’s got a good vibe about him where people just like him and he’s not afraid to say what he thinks.”
Right down to something as small as New England drafting another quarterback in his class.
Few people on the planet are capable of doing the things Joe Milton can with a football. McCartney worried the presence of such a stunt man could’ve been awkward or even a bit intimidating for the third overall pick. One bad game and it’d be quite easy for fans to demand Paul Bunyan in Pads take the field to the pigskin a quarter mile. One prominent sports analyst predicted Milton would outright usurp Maye in camp. Yet, Maye never appeared threatened.
All along the person who helped Maye the most was Jacoby Brissett.
It’s easy to see why Brissett keeps getting jobs in the NFL.
When the journeyman starter found out he was getting benched for the rookie, McCartney remembers the vet walking into the meeting room. It was a Monday or Tuesday night. Brissett looked Maye directly in the eyes and said he wouldn’t make this weird. “Whatever you need,” he assured, “I got you.”
The two were already exceptionally tight. Somehow, they grew even closer.
“Jacoby is just a great teammate,” McCartney says. “Then, just seeing how Jacoby prepared. How Jacoby studied. His preparation. His schedule. How he thought about the game. How he thought about the reads, the plays. Having that when you’re a rookie is very, very important.”
Brissett had played with Tom Brady and Philip Rivers. Watching his professional process firsthand — without the pressure to play those first 1 ½ months — helped.
“I know people like to make fun of us sitting him — because obviously he came in and he’s a great player,” McCartney says. “But there’s something to be said for getting to learn your process when the pressure’s not on you yet. And getting to adjust and getting to see what that looks like and here’s what the practice rep looked like, but here’s the game rep we got. And it wasn’t the look we talked about once on a Wednesday afternoon, but it wasn’t practice. You get to see that before you’re getting smacked in the mouth. Sitting those weeks did help him. It takes a little bit of the pressure off.
“He improved a lot faster than I thought he would in Year One. I thought he was going to be more of a project when we drafted him. I was wrong. He just improved, improved, improved. But I do think that time did help him and that time behind Jacoby specifically — somebody who is a good teammate and didn’t withhold anything from him. Somebody who rooted for him and then somebody who knows how to prepare. You can’t just sit behind anyone in any room, but Jacoby being in there specifically helped.”
It wasn’t easy for Maye to take Brissett’s job. He cared for him. He knew that quarterback play was the least of New England’s problems.
Now, Brissett is starting again for the Arizona Cardinals and Maye has another excellent vet in the room (Josh Dobbs).
However you slice it, he grew through the good and the bad in 2024.
McCartney doesn’t hesitate now. He absolutely believes Maye belongs in the same sentence as all of the top quarterbacks in the sport — Mahomes, Allen, Lamar, whoever. He watched New England’s win in Tampa, Fla., from Baker Mayfield’s suite. (McCartney also coached Mayfield in Cleveland.) From above, the QBs coach saw a a lot more talent in that Patriots’ huddle than what they had in ’24. The front office surrounded Maye with new linemen, a few more weapons and Mike Vrabel hardened the defense in no time.
He sees no reason why Maye cannot pull a Burrow and lead these Patriots to the Super Bowl in Santa Clara, Calif. Burrow was one Aaron Donald block away from connecting with Ja’Marr Chase on a game-winning touchdown.
All disgruntled alpha wideouts will be begging to play with Maye in ‘26 and beyond. Snow and taxes be damned.
McCartney doesn’t want to put any undue pressure on the shoulders of a 23-year-old. Anything can happen to a young quarterback’s career. Look at Burrow. This week in Cincinnati, he sounded like a man falling out of love with the sport itself. But it’s impossible not to envision championships in Maye’s future. McCartney knows how this QB works, knows his skill-set.
“He certainly has those things in his future,” McCartney says, “whether it’s this year or in the years to come.
“I mean, he’s the real deal.”
A sobering reality for everyone who had to deal with that other Patriots quarterback for an entire generation.
Thank you Tyler for another insightful article. He does appear to drop deep passes in and throw a catchable ball. I took a look at the advanced stats and the Patriots have only 12 drops this year, tied for second lowest in the NFL.