At this point, after the offensive debacle that was the New England Patriots’ 15-10 loss Sunday, it seems like the only remaining question is not if the Pats make a quarterback change, but when.
Will they bench Jacoby Brissett and start Drake Maye in five days or in six?
Because the way coach Jerod Mayo spoke in his Monday morning news conference, change is coming. It now seems just a question of whether the Pats make the switch for their home game on Sunday against the 4-1 Houston Texans or wait until the Monday after to anoint Maye as the quarterback heading into the London game against the 1-4 Jacksonville Jaguars. Do they pick the home game against the tougher team? Or the weird week of prep (that includes an international flight) against a lesser team?
We’re asking those questions because, on Monday, Mayo struck a drastically different tone. The coach who for four weeks defended Brissett at every turn, preached patience and stressed the importance of sticking to the team’s plan for developing Maye instead left the door open for the switch that has been anticipated since Maye was taken with the third pick in April’s NFL Draft.
Mayo used to say things like this, which he said a week ago: “Jacoby is 100 percent our starter.”
What was Mayo’s tune on Monday?
“We have to look at every single unit and every single player and figure out how we use this roster to go out there and win games,” Mayo said when asked about a potential quarterback change.
LIVE: Jerod Mayo Press Conference 10/7: https://t.co/ZIXyawE8uR
— New England Patriots (@Patriots) October 7, 2024
Of course, the play of the Patriots offense isn’t giving the coach much reason for optimism. Yet when Brissett’s poor numbers came up in the past, Mayo tended to defend the veteran quarterback by noting the pressure he’s often under and the toughness he shows in repeatedly bouncing back.
But Monday was different.
“It just wasn’t good enough,” Mayo said of Brissett’s performance, an 18-of-34 passing outing for 160 yards. “I thought we played well enough defensively and on special teams to win the football game. Look, as the quarterback, and he understands this, he touches the ball on every single play and we didn’t … score enough points to win the game. I think he would echo that same sentiment that it wasn’t good enough.”
We’ve covered every twist and turn with the Patriots’ quarterback situation. And I’ve made it clear that the Patriots should switch to Maye. But as reader Braden D. noted in the comments of Sunday night’s story, the decision can be conflicting as a fan with legitimate reasons for apprehension about throwing Maye into the fire given the state of the roster around him. So based on Braden’s suggestion, let’s dig into the stats (all from TruMedia unless otherwise stated) to examine what the Patriots coaching staff will likely be considering, the pros and cons of switching to Maye right now.
Pros
The Patriots need something to jump-start this offense. It simply isn’t working. Or, to be more specific, the passing game isn’t working. The Pats are running it fairly well given that every team they face sells out to stop the run.
New England is facing more Cover 1 defense with a single-high safety than any team in the league. Yet the running game has been fine. The Patriots rank 11th in the NFL in explosive plays from the running game, 17th in rushing success rate, and ninth in yards per rush.
Teams are daring the Patriots to beat them deep, but until they switch to Maye, there’s no real threat of them doing that. This is the reality of the offense with Brissett. They have the fewest passing yards in the NFL, the worst net yards per attempt, the fewest passing touchdowns and the worst completion percentage. They’ve allowed the second-most sacks and have the second-worst percentage of explosive plays from their passing game.
There are reasons beyond Brissett for the unit’s struggles, but Brissett is compounding them by holding onto the ball for too long. Only five teams have been slower at getting rid of the ball than the Patriots. Brissett is simply too slow when he needs to make the kinds of quick decisions that would mitigate the offensive line’s issues. Brissett ranks 19th in the league in the percentage of throws he makes in 2.5 seconds or less. If Maye were better in that area, the offensive line wouldn’t look so bad. Maye played behind a bad offensive line last year at North Carolina, so he should be used to getting the ball out quickly.
The expectation with Maye isn’t that he’d come in and be a top-10 quarterback as fellow rookie Jayden Daniels has done in Washington. But if the Patriots can hit a few deep passes, defenses will have to change the way they play the Patriots, which could open up even more success in the run game. At the very least, that would be more worth watching than what we saw Sunday.
Plus, while the situation around the quarterback isn’t great, there’s no guarantee next season is going to be dramatically better. What if the top-five pick the Patriots are lined up to get doesn’t pan out? What happens if receivers again turn them down in free agency or trades? Should they just keep Maye on the bench — potentially for another year or two — until they finally feel they have a suitable setup?
Cons
There’s no debate about where to start here. The Patriots’ supporting cast for Maye — or any quarterback, for that matter — stinks.
There’s not a team in the league that would trade its 10 other offensive starters for what the Patriots have.
Let’s start with the offensive line. It was already a bad unit before it lost a starting offensive tackle (Chuks Okorafor) and a starting center (David Andrews). The Pats have now used five different starting O-line combinations in five games. They’ve allowed the highest pressure rate in the NFL (46 percent) despite being blitzed at only the 16th-highest rate. While you could argue that the offensive line was mostly fine on Sunday against the Dolphins, new center Nick Leverett was a disaster. According to Pro Football Focus, he matched the most pressures allowed (10) by a center in one game since the company started charting in 2006.
Do you really want to put Maye under center with that guy?
The wide receivers are the other issue. While getting Kendrick Bourne back helps, it’s still a group without a player who strikes fear in opposing defenses. Demario Douglas is the only receiver on the team with positive yards after the catch over expected rate (xYAC), per Next Gen Stats. Meanwhile, K.J. Osborn and Ja’Lynn Polk rank last and second-to-last out of 118 qualified players in separation when targeted, per Next Gen Stats. Meanwhile, Polk ranks 113th in yards after the catch over expected.
Sure, it helps the Patriots to be able to lean on the running game, but the offense has bigger problems than the quarterback. So why risk hurting Maye’s development by putting him out there with a bad setup around him?
“Those guys, it was a little bumpy at first, Jayden Daniels aside, but those guys are playing at a high level,” Mayo said of the other first-round rookie quarterbacks in action this season. “It’s natural for fans and for the media to say, ‘Well, we have a good quarterback waiting in the wings as well.’ At the same time, our mentality is: How do we develop him? How do we get the guys on the field around him to develop, and move forward from there?”
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(Photo: Adam Hunger / Getty Images)
