Patriots Insider: “I don’t know how you do much better” than Drake Maye’s did vs. the Dolphins 😤

Patriots Insider: “I don’t know how you do much better” than Drake Maye’s did vs. the Dolphins 😤

Here are Drake May’s numbers against Miami and where they rank in his short NFL career. He tied his completion percentage yesterday. Passing yards on Sunday, seventh highest in his uh year plus. Yards per attempt. Total touchdowns. QB rating were either first or tied for first in his pro career. Mike Greybel complimentary but not gushing about May’s performance this morning. Well, that was hugely efficient. Um, the ball went where it was supposed to go. Uh, he was decisive. I thought he did a great job of transferring into the pocket, up into the pocket, setting his depth, and then transferring up, being really good with the football, being able to pull through with two hands in the pocket when they have, you know, edge rushers and we’re on the road. Uh, that’s where it’s going to be really critical is to be able to set the depth of the pocket, get back, keep your eyes downfield, transfer up into the pocket, and deliver the football. and he did that on on on multiple occasions. All right, Phil. Tom, let’s dive a little deeper into what the offense was able to do against Miami yesterday. We sort of skimmed the surface in the in the last block. We talked about his poise, confidence, Phil, but like more specifically, what did you see from Drake May that he did yesterday that he was not able to do last Sunday? Well, quick decision-m is the first thing that I come up with and and Tom referenced this off the top of the show, but according to NextGen stats, he had the football out of his hands in just a shade over two and a half seconds, which was third fastest in the league for week two. So, the short passing game, the quick passing game, it was non-existent in week one. He wanted layups. He was talking to us about layups versus three-pointers back in training camp in terms of what might settle him down early in games. Tom, this was a layup type of game for him. And so, you credit him for being able to make those decisions, but you credit the people putting the game plan together behind the scenes to give him those easy decisions to make. And it’s funny because after you hit the layups, you can start to hit some fadeaways on the baseline, which would be that throw to Quan Booty because he had developed some ability to to understand I’m going to have a pretty good day because he built that early confidence. I want to reference the thing that Vrabel’s talking about with stepping forward in the pocket last week. He walked into a sack uh with Will Campbell having a guy sealed off. Walked into that sack because he was a little adult. This stepping up in the pocket means he’s getting to a depth and moving forward. It’s something that Josh McDaniels I think really stresses. You can’t set too far and and Hoyer does all the time. You can’t set too far back because you screw your tackles and then you’re going to get whacked. And he had how many fumbles last year? Seven. It was a lot. So there was a the 2001 Super Bowl at the beginning of the final drive. Tom Brady had had a fumble problem the entire year. Mike Vreyel, of course, was on that team. Leonard Little, who’s one of the best pass rushers in the NFL at that time, came around the edge. He hit Brady on either the first or second play of that drive, and Brady held it. Step forward, hit Troy Brown. Those are the kinds of incremental progresses that need to be seen. And May made those. Why did he make them even? Why might he make them in the future? Because he’s 23. He could still do that. But on this day, he took care of the little things and played efficiently, which is for the third overall pick, regardless of age, regardless of of how many offensive coordinators he has. That’s the standard that they expect. And I think you can play efficiently, Triny, when you have command at the line, too. And so, when I’m watching it or when Ted Johnson and I are breaking down the most important plays in the game, what’s happening before the ball is even snapped. You see a lot of directing traffic. You see a lot of conversation with the backs, with the line about who you need to make sure you have in pass protection. you have some alerting at the line of scrimmage because you sent somebody in motion and okay now we know man versus zone this is the play that we want and then you go out and execute thereafter. So to do that and do it on the road and do it when you are using silent count at times when protection can be an issue just because you’re in a foreign environment that to me is a sign of growth too. This feels though like a huge jump current like like to go from what he looked like that last week to what he looked like this week which looked like a more than competent NFL quarterback. Why was he able to look so different in just you get what three days essentially to to make the adjustments? Everything’s temporary. We’re going to have a good show tonight. We might have a bad show tomorrow. You’re going to have a good round of golf. You’re going to have a horrendous round of golf. Everything is temporary. It depends on how you feel that day. It depends on being in second and two as opposed to third and eight. It depends on whether or not your guys getting toasted um or or the gap is covered or whether you have a better safety on the other side. To me, there’s so many different factors that will enter into it. What he has to do is minimize those small things that that can be unforced errors like what Vrabel’s talking about with stepping up in the pocket, setting the spot, and figuring out how to go forward. That way, you’re not going to blow up a play all on your own that most people won’t notice. So, if he can get those little things out, then he can get to those good plays. Speaking of little things that I think made a big impact in this game, I’ll keep going back to it. The ability to run the football was the difference. That’s the difference. And the difference when you’re able to run the ball is about 6 in between you as an offensive lineman and your teammate also on the offensive line. If you’re trying to get a double team on a defender and you’re 6 in apart when you really should be shoulderto-shoulder, hip to hip, you’re not going to get any movement when you’re the the same distance Tom and I are away from each other right now. You’re going to get that movement when you close down that space and you use your power together to move people off the ball. It’s it’s this much. That’s the difference in an easy game and a hard game for Drake May. So, I give that offensive line and that coaching staff that works with those guys a lot of credit. You’ve been bullish on Drake May from the start. Was yesterday it wasn’t obviously I I feel like it was the ceiling. Was it the middle floor? Like where were we in what Drake May is capable of? Where where does a game like yesterday rank? Well, I don’t think it shows you the ceiling because I think what they asked him to do was not the maximum difficulty level that they could have asked him to do depending on the game and the situation. I think week one that was about as hard as it gets when you have to drop back 53 times. So, not the ceiling, Tom, but given what he had to work with and what he was asked to do in terms of a grade, I gave him an A. I I don’t know how you do much better outside of a couple missed throws and maybe some protection assignments that he could have helped on that led to sacks. I didn’t see many flaws in his game on Sunday. No, I mean the ceiling for Drake May as opposed to say for instance M. Jones. M. Jones had a game in 2023 where he was 22 for 25 for 280 and whatever and they beat Buffalo which was good is good. So those things happen that was his ceiling. Drake May’s ceiling. For instance, Russell Wilson threw for like 458 yesterday. He’s 30 whatever years old. Drake May should be able to at some point in his career be a guy who regularly can drop back and have a four or five touchdown game, throw for over 400 yards, be the best player in the National Football League uh once, two, three times a year. That’s what he should be able to do with the area of skills he has. So, it’s definitely not a ceiling, but whatever it is asked for on that day, can he provide it? and he delivered what he was asked for on this day and he wasn’t able to do that despite not a disastrous week one. I mean, he still was third for 30 for 45, but you know, this this is delivering what you want, which is what Frabel was addressing. And I think part of the reason Drake May was able to be successful yesterday, Curran, is because Josh McDaniels, they may not have paired things down, but it certainly seems like they made it a more Drake May friendly style offense. Like, where were the biggest differences in how the game was called yesterday? We heard Phil talk about the run game, but it just seemed like the screen plays fit in better there. Like he was under center more often. He wasn’t always having to drop back and shotgun. Like all those little things. Is that simplifying the game for him? Like how do they If it works, it is. I mean, like you can call a run on first and 10 and if you get two yards or you can call a screen and if it gets blown up, it’s third and 11 and the game’s not going to be simple. If the first play works, the next play is going to flow from it. You can make it as simple as you want to. if the play prior is successful. So to me, I I don’t think that Josh sat there and said, “We really got to fix this for him.” He probably said, as he would have said in week one, if we do this, it’ll be an easy game. If we can’t do it, if we end up in second and 12 or if we have a false start, it’s going to be a hard game. Two things that I loved what Josh McDaniels did for this game plan and for Drake May to make it easier for him. Number one was their use of motion. They were near the bottom of the league in week one in terms of how often they used motion. in motion can’t help. Sometimes it’s just a little bit of dressing to make a play look a little bit different than maybe it had earlier in the game. But for the Patriots and in this offense for years, it’s always been helpful for quarterbacks specifically when it comes to identifying man versus zone. And so when you go from about 30% in week one to over 50% of Drake May’s dropbacks featuring some sort of pre-nap motion in week two, that to me makes it easier for him. The other thing that made it easier was this bootleg stuff that we saw. It was a West Coast style of offense through the first half, a lot of the same types of plays we saw last year with Alex Vampelt, who’s a Shanahan disciple. So, when you look at the influence of this game plan, that to me is maybe where there’s a a person who’s flown a little bit under the radar in terms of our consciousness when it comes to covering this football team, and that’s Thomas Brown. He’s the pass game coordinator and title. He’s also the tight end’s coach, but he comes from that McVey tree. He comes from a West Coast background. I don’t think it’s any coincidence he’s on the staff now, Tom. and you’re seeing wide zone and you’re seeing bootleg passes for Drake May where he looks really fluid and really natural. This team knows that those bootleg plays need to be part of their offense with Drake May behind center and they were able to execute on him on Sunday. There was one cool thing too that is unrelated to that, but the Patriots are going to have to rely on their younger players. Maybe they weren’t doing that as much in the first game. Maybe that was a victim of circumstance, but there was a play in the first half when May threw a screen in a high leverage situation to Trayvon Henderson. Jared Wilson got out in front of that screen, delivered a block downfield to probably gain Henderson, another eight yards, Will Campbell at blocked down. But you have your second year, third overall pick, throwing to your second round pick running back that people are high on with your fourth overall pick tackle making a play and your rookie guard making a play. This team has to rely on those guys. That’s why I keep saying everything is is kind of temporary. You don’t know how it’s going to look last week, but those are four young guys in critical areas making a play that Josh is saying, “Well, these are my guys. Let’s Let’s go get it. Yeah. A couple of young guys also on the offensive line. You talked at the top of the show about they won because of Drake May, not just with Drake May. Did they win because of the offensive line in spite of the offensive line or just with the No, listen. When it comes to the run game, I give them a ton of credit. If they’re not able to get the push that they were able to get, Drake May’s life becomes more difficult. We’re not talking about Drake May having the best game of his young career to this point. So, I think they won in part because of the offensive line. And Tom’s right to bring up the two rookies especially. How often have we talked about Will Campbell’s short arms by the way over the course of two weeks? And I know it’s a two it’s two weeks and Tom’s got me thinking. It’s ringing in my ears now. Everything’s temporary. Everything’s temporary. So let’s not stamp him as a future AllP Pro just yet. But it’s been two weeks and it’s been pretty damn good. Aside from a couple false start penalties for the fourth overall

Tom E. Curran and Phil Perry join Trenni Casey on Arbella Early Edition to go deep on Drake Maye’s performance vs. the Miami Dolphins in Week 2. The guys discuss what stood out about the QB compared to his rough outing vs. the Raiders and what Josh McDaniels and the offensive coaching staff did to put Maye in a better position to succeed in the win.

https://bit.ly/4bpz1aw