New England Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel is on the campaign trail.
Vrabel, who has been relatively reserved when it comes to discussions surrounding individual awards, pivoted when he stated that he believed quarterback Drake Maye was worthy of being named NFL MVP during an appearance on WEEI’s “The Greg Hill Show” on Monday.
Vrabel was then asked to expound upon that belief during his press conference several hours later, and did exactly that.
“He’s extremely accurate. He’s made the most of every passing opportunity. We created a lot of X plays, and to create X plays it’s about 30% scheme and it’s about 70% the players making a play, and part of that is the quarterback putting it in a great location for run-after-catch, I think you continue to see that,” Vrabel said, per team-provided video.
“His ability to extend, use his legs to gain first downs—critical first downs. His ability to score when we’ve asked him to score and run it in. He’s been everything that we’ve asked and he continues to get better. He’s not satisfied. I know that our success, where we are right now today, has a lot to do with Drake Maye.”
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Maye finished the regular season with 4,394 passing yards, 450 rushing yards and 35 total touchdowns, though the most impressive statistics coming out of his sophomore season are tied to the fact that he broke the franchise record for completion percentage (72%) and did it while leading the league in yards per attempt (8.9), air yards per attempt (9.46), passer rating (113.5) and QBR (77.2).
Los Angeles Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford, who led the league in passing yards (4,707) and passing touchdowns (46), is the current favorite to win the award at DraftKings Sportsbook.
Maye isn’t far behind, however.
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It’s as good a race as we’ve seen in recent seasons, and will likely finish with an extremely close vote.
