FOXBORO, Mass. — Initially, there wasn’t anyone open, so Drake Maye drifted to his right, then escaped the pocket altogether. Some 50 yards downfield, receiver Tyquan Thornton saw Maye rolling out, adjusted his route and beat his defender toward the sideline.
Maye saw all of this. It was the Patriots’ second drive of their surprising win over the New York Jets on Sunday. Maye had already led a touchdown drive on the first. While on the run, the 22-year-old rookie quarterback heaved the ball from his own 12-yard line, the kind of pass on Maye’s college tape that had impressed the Patriots.
The ball traveled 45 yards through the air and hit Thornton’s outstretched hands. The receiver was pushed by Jets defensive back Jalen Mills, a former Patriot, but not so hard that it should have broken up the pass. Still, the ball fell to the ground. Incomplete. A drop — and a sign of things to come.
Against the Jets, Patriots wide receivers dropped five of their 16 targets. Combined, they only made seven receptions. So obvious were the errors that no one could hide from them after the game.
“Personally, I just have to play better,” Kendrick Bourne, the elder statesman of the group, said. “I hated that game. I played so bad. Just have to look in the mirror. … As a group, we have to focus. It’s good to get a win, but there’s a lot to improve on.”
Sunday’s game crystallized an unfortunate reality halfway through this season: The Patriots have a wide receiver problem, in the short and long term. And it’s not clear there’s a fix in sight.
Even though the Patriots have plenty of holes on their roster, you can at least squint and see some progress at several of the positions. The offensive line is making marginal improvements. The secondary has held its own even without both starting safeties. The quarterback position is much better with Maye on the field.
Kudos are deserved for the Patriots offensive line.
From Weeks 1-5: They allowed a pressure rate of 46 percent (32nd in the NFL).
From Weeks 6-8: They allowed a pressure rate of 35 percent (15th in the NFL).
— Chad Graff (@ChadGraff) October 28, 2024
But the wide receivers have been and likely will remain an enormous problem.
In the short term, they are costing the Patriots chances to win games and hurting Maye’s development. Kayshon Boutte helped the Patriots pull off the upset Sunday with his sliding, 34-yard catch on the final drive, but that was only after dropping two earlier passes. A drop often means a premature end to a drive, which could be discouraging for a young quarterback. It’d be frustrating to make an incredible pass, like the one to Thornton, only to have it result in an incompletion.
In the long term, it’s a problem because the prime directive for the Patriots this season is identifying which players will be central to their plans. Are there any New England receivers you feel better about now than you did three months ago? (Maybe just Boutte.) And are you confident any of them can be a No. 1 or 2 (heck, even a No. 3) option for Maye in two years? (No.)
Then, just as troubling, there’s the dilemma of trying to find a fix.
The new Patriots front office made landing a veteran wide receiver its top priority before the season, but the two best options (Calvin Ridley and Brandon Aiyuk) showed no interest in coming to New England regardless of how much the Pats would have paid. Maybe that’ll change and Tee Higgins can be persuaded this spring, but that’s not a great early sign for their chances.
If they can’t sign or trade for a high-end wide receiver, they’ll have to draft and develop one. The Patriots are likely to have a high draft pick to select a wide receiver if they wish. But little about this franchise of late suggests they’ll pick the right guy. And nothing about the current receiving corps indicates New England will be able to properly develop that player.
In this year’s draft, the Patriots took Washington’s Ja’Lynn Polk in the second round and Javon Baker of UCF in the fourth. Polk ranks 19th among rookie wide receivers with just 78 receiving yards. Highly drafted wide receivers, if they’re going to be successful pros, tend to translate their talent quickly into NFL production. There were 10 wide receivers drafted in the first 50 picks last April. Eight of them have recorded at least 200 yards this season. The only two who haven’t are Polk (pick No. 37) and 49ers first-rounder Ricky Pearsall, who has only played two games after suffering a gunshot wound to the chest before the season. Pearsall has 59 yards through two games.
Meanwhile, Baker has yet to make a catch and has been a healthy scratch in five games.
They’re the two receivers who are supposed to be most central to this rebuild, but neither has offered much hope so far, though coach Jerod Mayo indicated we could soon see more from Baker after he returned a kick 17 yards Sunday, his first touch in an NFL game.
“Obviously, it was disappointing, but it wasn’t just him, it was also the blocking up front,” Mayo said of the kick return. “Look, this guy is very explosive with the ball in his hands, and we have to, as coaches running a solution-based business, find ways to get him the ball.”
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This isn’t to say all is hopeless with these of receivers, even if they rank at the bottom of the league. Demario Douglas has shown flashes of explosiveness after the catch, so maybe can develop into a solid No. 3. Maybe Polk puts this slow start behind him and returns from a concussion to kick off an impressive second half of the season. Maybe Baker gets some playing time this week against the Tennessee Titans and develops into the deep threat the Patriots so badly need (though he, too, dealt with drops in college). Maybe Boutte’s drops early Sunday were a blip and he keeps building on his big plays this season, steadily progressing into the top option on the 2024 team.
The Patriots really need at least one of those to happen. But at the same time, Mayo indicated that the struggles catching the ball aren’t a “hands” issue.
“A lot of people say get on the Jugs machine,” Mayo said Monday in a radio interview on WEEI, referring to the machine receivers use to work on catching. “But at the same time, you don’t have a 250-pound linebacker running at you. It comes down to concentration.”
No one position is going to impact Maye’s development more than wide receiver. The Patriots knew that when they unsuccessfully tried to upgrade the position this spring. Now, either this current group needs to show significant improvement, or the front office will have to do a much better job in the offseason picking new players.
“They need to get better,” Mayo said. “I mean, those guys went out there and they were open at times. The job of a receiver is to get open and catch the ball, and if you’re really good, run with it afterward. So, they definitely have to get better, and they understand that.”
(Photo of Ja’Lynn Polk: Jaiden Tripi / Getty Images)
