Part of what made the start to Drake Maye’s season so confounding was that the circumstances around him had improved across the board from the previous year.
After a near-MVP season, the Patriots invested in the O-line with Alijah Vera-Tucker and at receiver with A.J. Brown and Romeo Doubs. Maye would be working with Josh McDaniels for a second consecutive season, while rookies like TreVeyon Henderson, Will Campbell and Kyle Williams could be expected to grow in Year 2.
Despite all of that, Maye was succumbing to issues that he simply brushed aside last year. He was being pressured … and was making back-breaking mistakes as a result. After losing Brown, his receiving group looked underwhelming, and Maye seemingly lacked the trust necessary to throw them open for game-changing plays.
And on Sunday in Buffalo, none of that changed. He was under pressure on half of his dropbacks. His receiving corps actually got worse when Mack Hollins left the game early in the third due to injury. The running back duo of Rhamondre Stevenson and Henderson had long runs of 10 yards and 11 yards, respectively, while averaging 2.7 yards per attempt on their other 25 carries.
Essentially, all of the roadblocks that knocked Maye down in Weeks 1-3 were back in Week 4. The difference was that Maye simply didn’t let them stop him.
He got blasted from his blind side while delivering a perfectly timed pass to Romeo Doubs to give New England a 7-0 lead.
That pass was entirely based on timing and trust. Doubs came through for his quarterback.
It was one of several high-level, special throws by Maye in this game, a trait he had struggled to display through the first three games. And with his team needing a touchdown on third-and-5 in the final minutes of the game, Maye channeled his confidence properly and — while on the run — dropped one in the bucket.
Of course, that goes in the books as an incompletion if not for Efton Chism’s superhuman effort in the end zone, but the point is that this is the Drake Maye we all saw last year. This is the Drake Maye who had gone missing early this season.
Yet if this is the Drake Maye the Patriots will be having under center for the rest of the season, then the ceiling on the year remains as high as possible. At the very least, this version of Drake Maye ensured that Buffalo would not be able to run away with a division crown after just four weeks of the season.
That’s the big news. Let’s hit all of the leftover thoughts from the Patriots’ 29-26 win over the Bills.
— There were two areas where the team’s trust in Maye was evident. And I believe one begat the other.
The opening drive was the first case. The Patriots drove 97 yards and got 92 of them from Maye, who ran for 15 yards (scrambling out of danger in his own end zone) and threw for 77.
While the TD to Doubs showed he was in the zone, his recovery of a fumbled snap that he turned into a 20-yard gain to Hunter Henry showed that he wasn’t going to let slip-ups derail him or the offense.
Maye was a leader, and so when it came time to ice the game, the Patriots trusted him to get it done. The safe route of running into a brick wall, forcing the Bills to use their three timeouts, and punting it back to Buffalo with about 50 seconds left would have been the safe thing to do. Nobody would have called Mike Vrabel or Josh McDaniels dumb if that was the approach.
Yet they trusted Maye to get the game-winning first down, and they did that twice. It didn’t work the first time, largely due to an unblocked rusher off the left side, stopping the clock with 55 seconds left on the clock. The safe-ish move at that point would have been a running play, leaving Buffalo with just one timeout for the potential game-tying or winning drive.
But Vrabel and McDaniels put the game back into the hands of Maye, and he rewarded them, showing poise in the face of another free rusher and calmly delivering a pass in stride to Hunter Henry to move the chains and set up a victory formation situation for New England.
In many ways, a quarterback being trusted to win the game in crunch time is not a remarkable event. Yet considering the scrutiny and examination of Maye’s psyche all week long, and given his poor decision-making on display this year, Sunday’s performance by Maye — from top to bottom — was exactly what he and the team needed. And it’s what everybody was waiting for.
— There’s something refreshing that in a world filled with data and analytics, we can look at Mike Vrabel being 5-0 after his teams start 1-2, and we can just say, “Yup. That makes sense. Not a coincidence.”
It shouldn’t be overlooked that in a week where the media was questioning his relationship with his quarterback, with several of last year’s AFC playoff teams spiraling out of contention early, and with many around the NFL gleefully watching the Patriots crash back to earth, Vrabel just kind of Vrabeled his team to a trademark type of win on the road in Buffalo.
— Vrabel, however, should feel deep shame for cussing on a football field. Of all the places to cuss, the football field is not one of them. Nobody has ever cussed on a football field, and Vrabel thinks he can just go out there and cuss? Uh-uh. No way, no how.
Referee Bill Vinovich made sure that Vrabel knew that cussin’ will not be allowed on a football field. Not now, not ever.
Thank you, Bill Vinovich, for being a vigilant steward of the integrity of the game.
— A lot of people were wondering why Josh Allen wasn’t flagged for intentional grounding on his whoopsy-daisy sneakaroo backhand pass from his own end zone. It could be that Allen was on the very edge of the tackle box and got the benefit of the doubt from the officiating crew.
But more likely? The men in stripes were thinking the same thing we all were: “Wow. That’s crazy. There’s no way he just did that. How about that? Kind of cool.”
Gregory Fisher-Imagn Images
Gregory Fisher-Imagn Images Josh Allen throws a backward pass to avoid taking a sack near the goal line against the Patriots.
Regardless, between that pick-six-waiting-to-happen and the Leroy Jenkins pick to Craig Woodson in the final minutes, Allen was the one making reckless decisions and hurting his team in this one.
— For as much as the quarterback dominates headlines, the Patriots’ defense played exceptionally well, considering they were without two significant contributors in Christian Gonzalez and Christian Barmore. They got picked on a little bit with Charles Woods, and their run defense seemed to be wearing down late, which is to be expected. But their linebackers ran well (Robert Spillane) and delivered the boom (Christian Elliss). Elijah Ponder had a sack and a fumble recovery. Both Spillane and Carlton Davis punched the ball out of the hands of Khalil Shakir to force a turnover in the open field.
And Gabe Jacas did this to Dion Dawkins.
That was just disrespectful.
There was definitely a nastiness and a snarl from the defense, which made a league MVP look mortal and prevented James Cook from breaking the big one.
— One more Drake Maye play that shouldn’t be overlooked was the 2-point conversion to make it a 3-point lead for New England late in the game.
Meanwhile, Josh Allen got locked in to a covered receiver on a 2-point try and attempted to fit a pass into an impossible window … instead of throwing to a wide-open Dalton Kincaid.
— It was a huge day for Romeo Doubs, obviously, but still, he had the deflection to give Buffalo an interception and three points before halftime. And he couldn’t haul in this deep pass on the game-winning drive.
That’s a play the Patriots lost when they traded Kayshon Boutte to Houston. And though Doubs did a lot of professional work with his 6-catch, 58-yard, 2-touchdown performance, you couldn’t help but feel Boutte’s absence on that one.
— Boutte’s absence won’t matter if Efton Chism is going to make a habit of hauling in one-handed touchdown catches while fighting off a defender with the other arm.
Ryan Provencher-NBC Sports Boston
Ryan Provencher-NBC Sports Boston Efton Chism makes a one-handed TD catch vs. the Bills.
That’s art.
— If you somehow missed it, Bills defensive back C.J. Gardner-Johnson spoke rather disrespectfully about Chism and the Patriots after the game.
It’s fun to clown on Gardner-Johnson for being wrong and mad (don’t put it in the paper that he was mad, because he’s not mad), but his comment shows that the Bills’ defense was not aware that Chism was on the roster.
That’s not to say the Bills should have spent much time prepping for the Patriots’ fifth receiver, but if a starting safety thinks Chism was on the practice squad? Then defensive coordinator Jim Leonhard isn’t doing his job, and first-year head coach Joe Brady may not be running the tightest ship.
I say that respectfully, of course.
— Time to scratch an itch: I’m alarmed by how many people didn’t know the rule that a returning team can attempt to advance the ball with no risk of turning it over if the kicking team touches it first. You don’t see it all the time but you do see it, when a returner sneaks into a mini-huddle to try to escape with the ball and pull a fast one on the kicking team.
I’ll forgive the fans in the stadium for getting excited for what they thought was a touchdown because that’s why they’re there. But the announcer and so many spectating from home, at the very least I hope it proved to be a learning experience.
— In a way, and this is corny, there’s a “shame on us” feeling after this Patriots victory for the way we talked about this game all week. Many of us, myself included, said something along the lines of, “Yeah, the Patriots could win, if 11,000 things go wrong for the Bills.” In actuality, the Patriots played the Bills straight-up and simply beat them.
If anything, a number of bounces went against the Patriots.
The pinball interception off the ground was the biggest. The catch Keon Coleman made after Kindle Vildor broke up a pass deep up the left sideline was another. An obvious hands to the face penalty wasn’t called when Landon Jackson shoved Ben Brown into Maye, leading to the QB’s fumble. Even the punts bounced Buffalo’s way, with two Mitch Wishnowsky boots landing on the 10 but finding their way into the end zone for touchbacks.
If you wanted to get into officiating, you could point out that the defensive holding penalty called against Marcus Jones — the one Mike Vrabel vehemently disagreed with — was indeed a bleeping terrible bleeping call.
Nevertheless, they powered through, and they looked a lot like the team that went 17-3 last year. They can’t do that again this year, not against this schedule. Obviously. But Sunday’s performance felt almost necessary to restore the type of atmosphere this team will need as the season goes on.
Calling it a season-saving win might be hyperbole. But only slightly. This one was big.
