Patriots are being patient with Drake Maye, and Sunday's loss reminded us why

FOXBORO, Mass. — After the second time Jacoby Brissett was brutally thrown to the turf at Gillette Stadium, he took an extra second to get up. His job through two weeks has been arguably more difficult than that of any other quarterback in the NFL.

The 31-year-old New England Patriots quarterback is playing behind an offensive line that has allowed the second-highest pressure rate in the league while he throws to a group of receivers that ranks last in the NFL in receiving yards.

In Sunday’s loss to the Seattle Seahawks, when Brissett was thrown around behind porous pass protection, the Patriots and their fans were offered a reminder of why the team is being patient with rookie Drake Maye, the No. 3 pick in April’s NFL Draft. They don’t yet feel they’re properly able to support a rookie, no matter how promising Maye is, with the roster they currently have.

.@JBrissett12 and @Hunter_Henry84 making things happen.

📺: FOX pic.twitter.com/yPHlgiEx6n

— New England Patriots (@Patriots) September 15, 2024

And a look around the league supports that notion. Bryce Young, the No. 1 pick last year, has been benched by the Carolina Panthers one season and two games into his career. Caleb Williams, this year’s No. 1 pick, is off to a tough start behind a bad Chicago Bears offensive line.

So even though the Patriots badly need to improve their downfield passing, something Maye would almost certainly provide, Brissett remains the starting quarterback.

“As an organization, we’re still 100 percent behind Jacoby,” coach Jerod Mayo said during his weekly appearance on WEEI.

But the harsh reality for the Patriots is that even if they’re committed to Brissett, there’s no guarantee they can keep him healthy behind this offensive line long enough to develop Maye as they envision. The Patriots didn’t practice Monday, but with a Thursday night game looming against the New York Jets, they had to release a simulated injury report. Brissett was not listed with an injury, a positive sign for his health, though it’s less positive that all five starting offensive linemen were listed on the injury report.

The other difficult part of this quarterback tightrope for the Patriots is that they need to develop Maye, the backup quarterback, in a league where starters tend to get nearly every practice snap to be properly prepared for games.

That’s why Mayo met with de facto general manager Eliot Wolf before the season to discuss a developmental plan for Maye while keeping Brissett in the starting role. Essentially their dilemma boiled down to this: How do we ensure Maye is improving while not taking vital practice snaps away from Brissett? What they landed on is a 70-30 split in practice reps with the starters where Brissett still gets the majority but Maye sees plenty of action.

Maye’s role during games is limited. The days of backups holding a clipboard on the sideline are over. Instead, Maye wears an earpiece that allows him to hear the play call from offensive coordinator Alex Van Pelt that gets radioed into Brissett’s helmet. He’ll occasionally play catch before a drive to get Brissett warmed up. That’s about it.

“Normally, I would say the starter gets 95 percent of the reps and the backup doesn’t (get many),” Mayo said. “With this, it’s a little bit different. … We’re very thoughtful. When we talk about (how) we have a development plan for Drake, that’s part of it. I try not to get too deep into what that plan actually looks like, but (Maye) still takes reps with the starters. He does a good job on the show team as well. He’s doing a good job, and you can see his confidence continuing to grow.”

Where things get tricky for the Patriots is how they decide when to inevitably play Maye, balancing what the offense could look like with him while being careful not to ruin his confidence or reinforce bad habits.

Mayo made clear in the 24 hours after Sunday’s loss to the Seahawks that the Patriots need to push the ball downfield more and improve their passing attack. Based on everything we saw during the preseason, Maye would be better in that area than Brissett.

Yet it’s also clear that the Patriots’ issues in the passing game go far beyond Brissett’s limitations. They don’t have wide receivers who have shown they can win downfield, and even if they did, the offensive line’s struggles (it currently ranks second worst in the league in pass protection) have meant there’s little time for routes to develop.

In Brissett’s last year as a starter (2022) in this same offense with Van Pelt in Cleveland, Brissett ranked 11th in the league in air yards per pass (8.7). This season, he ranks 28th (6.0). That’s on the offensive line.

So then, the Patriots’ thinking goes, why play Maye — even if he’s a better downfield passer — if the offensive line and receivers aren’t good enough for that to consistently matter?

“In the pass game, I would say there were spurts of clean pockets, but it needs to be more consistent,” Mayo said. “I would also say as we got into the second half … our pass protection broke down a little bit. I still believe that we have a well-conditioned team. But I would say on both sides of the ball (Sunday), we saw a lot of hands on hips. But you have to push through that adversity and still be on the same page and ultimately execute.”

Perhaps the most disappointing part for the Patriots offensive line is that the struggles came with their best lineman, Mike Onwenu, grading out as the team’s worst, per Pro Football Focus. He and Vederian Lowe combined to allow seven pressures on Sunday.

The task ahead doesn’t get much easier. Through two weeks, the Jets rank third in the NFL in pressure rate despite ranking 25th in how frequently they blitz.

That means Brissett will probably again be under heavy pressure, again reminding everyone why the Patriots have so far been hesitant to play their talented rookie quarterback.