Is it time to hit the panic button after Drake Maye’s latest woeful performance?
Maye and the Patriots were blown out by the Jacksonville Jaguars in Sunday’s Week 3 matchup, 35-6. The third-year quarterback tossed two interceptions and lost a fumble in the defeat, bringing his turnover total to a league-high seven through three games this season.
After the loss, which brought New England to 1-2, Mike Vrabel admitted his “concern level is very high for this football team.” NBC Sports Boston’s Patriots insider Phil Perry agrees with the Patriots head coach.
“This is a massive concern right now,” Perry said on Postgame Live. “Because you have a quarterback who looks like he’s playing without any confidence. He’s a quarterback who can’t take care of the football. That should be at the top of the list of things that he was starting to chip away at here in Week 3.
“I said before the game this was going to be a get-right opportunity for the Patriots, and I couldn’t have been more wrong. It only became an opportunity for the regression — which is what this is right now for Drake Maye — to continue. This is now seven consecutive games where we’re still waiting for the guy that we saw for the majority of last season to show up.”
Maye’s struggles date back to last year, as he didn’t look like his MVP runner-up self throughout New England’s playoff run. He tossed three interceptions in the fourth quarter of this year’s season opener in Seattle, including one in the end zone that sealed the Seahawks’ win in the final minute.
His decision-making was questionable again in Week 3, particularly on his first interception of the day. The Patriots were on the Jags’ two-yard line with one minute left in the half when Maye forced a pass that had no chance of reaching his intended receiver, Efton Chism III. Instead, it landed in the hands of Jaguars cornerback Travis Hunter:
“Two fumbles, one lost. One could have been lost down by the goal line. Two abhorrent picks. He’s had three games now, and in two of them he’s been embarrassingly bad and cost them the game, quite plainly,” NBC Sports Boston’s Patriots insider Tom E. Curran said. “And that’s a franchise quarterback. That’s a guy who you’re considering giving $70 million a year to. At least three weeks ago we were all thinking that was a layup.
“It’s distressing because you don’t know when it’s going to end. I am confident that it will. This is not him. Last year might not have been him either, he’s somewhere in between, but he’s a mess. That pick to Efton Chism was the worst mistake I’ve seen, because you couldn’t see the little fella and he threw it anyway.”
Last year, the Patriots shook off a rough start to the season and finished with 13 wins in their next 14 games. Former Pats linebacker Ted Johnson can’t envision this year’s group having a similar turnaround.
“Just shocking to see how this offense is looking,” he said. “You go back to last year, they started off 2-2, and then that game five against Buffalo, boom, they looked like they went on hyperspeed and won the next 10 games.
“Does it look like this offense and this quarterback is trending to, in the next couple of games, all of a sudden gonna have a breakout? It doesn’t look like that at all. Going back to the last four games of the season last year into the first three games of this year, he’s got eight interceptions and eight fumbles. That’s 16 turnovers in just seven games.”
So, with a tough Week 4 game in Buffalo looming, is it time to hit the panic button on Maye and the Patriots offense?
“It’s not panic to the point where you’re starting to talk about trades and bringing in new quarterbacks. You’ve got to try to figure this thing out and make this work with this guy,” Perry said. “But you don’t have a lot of time. I mean, you’re three games into the season. … So, I mean, you can’t have a situation where the quarterback is turning it over on multiple occasions going into a divisional game against a team that we all thought they were going to be competing with and maybe beating out for the division as they did a year ago.
“So, I don’t know how you could be any more urgent about talking to this player about taking care of the football. It’s the same mistake over and over and over again, which, to me, is maybe the biggest concern. It’s not necessarily the fact that the ball is not coming out of his hand great, which it’s not. It’s not the fact that his feet are kind of a mess, which they are. It’s the fact that it’s bad decision after bad decision, and I don’t know how you wipe that away in a week’s time.”
Next Sunday’s game against the undefeated Buffalo Bills is scheduled for 1 p.m. ET at Highmark Stadium.
Watch our Postgame Live panel’s full reaction to Drake Maye’s performance and the Patriots’ loss to the Jaguars below:
