Drake Maye and Stefon Diggs are building REAL chemistry

Drake Maye and Stefon Diggs are building REAL chemistry

[Applause] Hey, what’s up everybody? Welcome in to Tom C’s Patriots talk podcast. You could not have scripted a better coming out party for the Patriots and specifically Drake May. Sunday night football rolls around, there’s only one unbeaten team left in the NFL. It’s the Bills. They have the best quarterback in the game, the reigning MVP, a player to whom Drake May has been loosely compared, Josh Allen. It’s the first time in prime time for Drake May. And it’s not just Monday or Thursday night. It’s Sunday Night Football on NBC. And there was a void, Phil, a vacancy in the conversation. Joe Burrow’s hurt. Everybody knows everything about Patrick Mahomes. Everybody knows everything about Josh Allen. Lamar Jackson’s hurt. Justin Herbert. I don’t know if that train’s ever coming in. Drake May’s performance fills the void of content. The yawning ma that needs to be fed. Phil content. Content. Content. You will have Drake May content to your heart’s content. You might remember the Boston sports guy, Bill Sibbons. He’s gone on to bigger things since, but here he was Monday talking about Drake May from the ringer. We had Brady for two decades. Before that, we didn’t really ever have anybody. And then we hit that bleak, you don’t have a quarterback stage at things again. And then you have all these dudes and M. Jones turned out to be disappointing. I’m glad he’s found himself in San Francisco and Cam Newton and Hoyers in there, all the Zappy, all these dudes. And you start to wonder like how many years are we just not going to have a quarterback? Like if you’re the Raiders right now, if you’re the Browns, you know, sometimes this could be two, three decades. And they have a guy. And so they beat Buffalo, but more importantly, like they have a guy. They know they have a guy. And there’s only 10 of them. And they have one of them. And no, it didn’t stop there. Here’s well reggarded but the youngest looking Ben Solak. I want to talk about some of these throws from Drake May last night. Some of these decisions, some of this arm talent, some of this field vision. It was just the best game of his career. He was so good against the Bills in in such a key moment on the road. Delightful. Celebrated football expert and afficionado Mina Kim says Drake May has been awesome for weeks now, but this felt like it was his first big moment on the national stage. Tremendous playmaking, accuracy, decision-m. What a complete performance. And the PS resistance came from Greg Olsen speaking to Dave Portoy from Barol Sports. Hit it, Greg. I’m not surprised he’s doing so well. I mean, last night he looked like he’s gonna be the best quarterback in the league. I mean, he’s that good against that team. He’s everything you want a young quarterback coming into the league in today’s world. Play from the pocket, play outside the pocket, pay, scramble, drill, design runs, scramble runs. He checks every box. He was arguably the best player on the field against the MVP. I mean, he he was that good. Phil Perry, we welcome you in right now. It looks like the conversation around the New England Patriots just got changed. They’re not a team on the make. They’re not a team on the rise. They’re not a team on the come. They’re a team that is here. I’m not going that far. And I don’t think all those people are going that far either. You’re you’re trying to drum up what they’re saying. I see what you’re doing here. I see it. I see it. I see it from a thousand miles away. However, I will say this. It is a worthy conversation if we’re talking about are the Patriots here and are they here to stay? Are they back? They’re probably not back to where they were once before because that’s what the word back implies, but they are back in the conversation to be a postseason team. Drake May is in the conversation as one of the best quarterbacks in football in 2025, five weeks in. All of that stuff is fair game. Like it or not, Mr. Tom E. I hate fun current way. Do you strap in and see the power rankings later this week? They usually come out on Tuesdays. There could be some top 10 Patriots power rankings. They’ve been residing around 28. My question though is this, Phil, and you kind of asked Mike Vrabel about it on Monday. How does Vrabel keep it in check while embracing what they accomplished? Because it was a big accomplishment, but you can appreciate it, but you don’t luxuriate in it. Yeah, Tom, nobody knows better than Mike Vrael that they need to move on and move on from this quickly. But I did ask him on Monday if this maybe helps him at all, if it helps his message resonate with players, if it helps the level of buyin that he’s receiving as a new head coach. Here’s what he had to say. Just trying to show him, I think, what they’re capable of doing when we can do it um together in all three phases and and play up up to our identity because it wasn’t great. I thought we played really hard. I thought we I thought we flew around on defense. I thought we tried to hammer the football out. Um, sometimes we did, sometimes we didn’t. They made some plays, but I thought we have even offensively a lot of room to grow special teams wise. We didn’t have the impact that we I maybe or were used to the the previous weeks or some of the phases. So I think that uh you know we continue to show them those things and what we need to improve the things that we do well. I do think that they are trying to uphold the style of play that we want to play with. Um and then we’ll just it’s every week is a challenge and then we’ll move on and you know we’ll prepare to go down and and play the Saints that are coming off a huge win at home and um you know that’s where we’re at. So that’s obviously a determined Mike Vrabel. That’s a Mike Vrabel who I think is is confident in terms of where his team is at right now. And he went on to say, “I’m not necessarily worried about buying. Guys are trying.” Mhm. Which comes with winning. And so with these games that are coming up on the schedule after reaching the the highest of highs that it felt like they were experienc experiencing in that visitors locker room in Orchard Park, New York on Sunday night. How do you go into a place like New Orleans with a not so great football team and continue to play these teams that are just not on the Bills level and keep that level where Mike Vrabel wants it? I think he’s got a pretty good idea of how to do that. Yeah. And and what is interesting, Mike can point to games and teams who bumped up against the Patriots in the early part of the 2000s. For instance, the San Diego Charges. Thank god I can actually use that term right now because they were in San Diego. They came here in 2005 and they mollywamped the Patriots and I remember Wade Phillips who was an assistant at the time walked to the tongue goes that’s an ass whipping right there and then Marty Shottenheimimer said well they had a lot of injuries then Brady took up and said don’t talk about the other team anyway within by 2006 the Patriots were breaking the Chargers heart in the playoffs by 2007 they were beating the Chargers in the AFC Championship game the Dragons aren’t all slain and I know that the Patriots Patriots don’t think that, but I have seen so many teams celebrate the way the Patriots were able to in Buffalo. What do they do with it will be really interesting to see. And one of the things that emerged from the game was the myriad Drake May takes. But there’s one from Cam Newton on first take on Monday morning that I really liked. Cam Newton on managing the game. Drake May did an unbelievable job with managing the game. And I I said it, managing the game. Every quarterback needs to assemble that key in order to to be effective. Bill, we’ve talked about it a million times. It still needs to be restated, though. Game manager means not just sitting there with 10 and two, but doing what the right thing at the right time is. Whether it is as you’re being hauled down, deciding to try and make a play, because maybe you do have to try and throw a knockout punch when you’re on the road. But this was a step for Drake May to take. You know, you can say he’s been brilliant as Mina did for weeks, but that’s been more every other week. But the ma national media doing a flyover doesn’t see the little mistakes that that needed cleaning up, which May did. And he didn’t just clean them up against the Titans or the Browns. He cleaned them up on the road in Buffalo. Yeah. I think the mistakes that he made going into Buffalo were I you call them little mistakes. I think because you’re you’re trying to make sure that the people know that you don’t think they are cataclysmic errors and that they couldn’t be fixed which obviously they they were in Buffalo. But I I felt like his mistakes were were few and far between and they were they were turnovers. So they were they were big mistakes. The mistakes I did the dumb the timing and nature of them was what drove me nuts. I thought the mistakes that we might see from Drake May in year two in a new offense would be truly little things like getting in and out of the huddle and having trouble with that, having guys aligned in bad spots and him not realizing that he has to move people in certain places. Um, you know, management of the clock. And I think that’s what Cam Newton’s getting at when he talks about game management in Buffalo. When to throw it away and when not to. The last play, offensive play of the game for the Patriots was a really smart play by Drake May that goes in the books as a sack, but he wanted to run clock. He did not want to throw it away. He had nowhere to go with the football. He gets back to the line of scrimmage. So, they don’t actually technically lose any yardage for his kicker, but the clock is running so that Josh Allen doesn’t have more time to be able to make some sort of miraculous comeback attempt. So, those little things, I’m I’m stunned by how on top of it he is. It’s the turnovers really that have been his bugaboo this year. And when he doesn’t have any, we see they can beat it looks like just about any team. It’s funny you point that out because the absence of those idiotic substitution mistakes, delay of games. And it’s not like they haven’t had any. It’s not like they haven’t had any false starts. We didn’t just suddenly get amnesia about what happened for the month of September because they won in Buffalo. There were there were those occasions. But to me, this win has different value if you’re evaluating the team and like not just sitting there saying, “Go Patriots.” Like, “How good can they be?” This win has a different value for me instead of him being a superhero all night and going 38 for 54 with four touchdowns and a pick because he had to be responsible. He couldn’t just go out there. I’m just going to go bananas. We’re going to have a shootout. So to me, there’s specific value in that. And I and I don’t even know if he has the personnel for a shootout. I don’t think he can get in a shootout. I mean, he could score points, but you can’t they’re not going up and down the field on people. I felt like that second half was kind of shootouty, Tom. Okay. You’re going down the field. You’re going you’re going down the field, down the middle of the field to to Hunter Henry. You’re going to the honey hole across the field from the left hash to the right boundary with the game on the line. You’re you’re putting it down the field to almost 32-year-old Stfane Diggs on a scramble drill play where you only have two guys in the route and you’re max protecting with eight and the defense is changing the picture on you and they’re bringing pressure and he goes and somehow just turns nothing into something and not just something but an explosive something. Sometimes we have a separation between definitions of things. I’m not saying those weren’t big chunk plays. I feel like a shootout’s that game between Kansas City and the Rams a few years ago. 51 to 45 just up and down defenses have no shot. You very rarely see that anymore. You’re right about that. But when you do the finger guns, I feel like Drake May is kind of doing that at times. And he he’s refusing to No one’s gonna be afraid of these guns. Take the most simple play because he wants to be aggressive. It’s in his nature. It’s in his DNA to be aggressive and the fact that he has been able to now in their three wins be able to manage that aggression while also not making mistakes because this team and the team around him specifically the talent around him is leaving their entire team with such a thin margin for error that he almost has to kind of play mistake free especially against good teams while also mixing in the aggressive stuff for them to win. and he’s done it in three or five weeks through his second season in a new offense. And that to me is why Patriots fans should be as excited as they are in talking about this guy in the terms that they are. So the only superheroy type of play, the only cape play I think was uh the throw to Digs to start the final drive. I shun fun. Okay, I enjoyed the play to Digs, but it was a risky precedent. Phil, here’s how Mike Vrabel saw it. You had the chance to either watch it back or even in real time. What did you see on the pass from Drake Ba Digs where he was like being t, you know, half falling over as he got the ball out? Just what did you see on that play? Uh, oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Oh my. We made it was an eight yard loss to a 12 yard gain. um you know just uh you know he’s continuing to to grow and gain confidence and show us and show everybody and show his team and himself the ability to operate in in the pocket ability to operate um in scheduled um move the pocket plays and then also off schedule, you know. So, putting the ball in in good locations and only, you know, not throwing behind guys and, you know, going on the move and and putting the ball in harm’s way. All right, there’s Mike Vrabel, Phil. It could have been an eight-y loss, but it turned into a 12- yard gain. It also could have been a pick, a game ceiling pick because Buffalo would have been first and 10 at the 40. All right. Okay. I’m very worried about them. It’s like you leave the house, you better have on clean underwear because if you get in an accident, do you want people to see you with dirty underwear? I’m very worried about Drake May. Maybe it’s my age. Speaking of dirty underwear, it sounds like you got a dump in your pants right now, my friend. I mean, you’re talking about the play of the game, the kid’s play of his career, and you’re saying that he shouldn’t have done it because you got to make the You know what it is? What? You’re a beaten man. You’re a beaten man. You just for many years you listen to Bill Bich and rightfully so and you listen to Tom Brady about not turning the football over and he was able he’s the one guy who was able to play the way he played and win as much as he did because he was that good. Most other guys have to take those kinds of risks to go out and you got to win the game. You can’t not lose it. I had such a problem with that philosophy and I still do because Tom Brady in his role now as a media person, he still espouses this philosophy as a good one. You got to first not lose the game. And I get it. You of course you can’t turn it over five times. He could point me to week three for the Patriots and the fact that they blew it against the Steelers. They lost that game. Got it. Got it. Got it. Got it. Got it. Against good teams, you got to go win the thing. You got to be aggressive. You’ve got to show some urgency. You’ve got to go make a play. You can’t wait for the other guys to screw it up. What kind of cowardly philosophy is that? Go take the thing. Drake May’s going and he’s taking it and he’s causing people potentially to mess themselves in the process. But that’s okay. There’s going to be a few messes on the way to wins for the New England Patriots in 2025 and beyond. You know, Phil, you’re making sense. Did David sit there and say, “What if I just what if I just wing the side of Goliath’s head? I’m going to get stomped like an ant.” No, he didn’t do that. He took the punches chance. He said, “I’m the underdog here. I’m gonna throw this thing right at his eye.” And he did. Drake May was David. His right arm was a slingshot. No. Yeah. And the football was the rock and Stefon Diggs was the guy who caught the rock, but the Bills were slain. The Goliath of the AFC East. All right. And another thing, hold on. Can I just one more thing? What? There was more than one superhuman play. Okay, you noted. Super friaking human. The roll out throw to Stefon Digs for 32 yards. One play later, Readandre Stevenson’s in the end zone. Okay. On the move where he put that football where only where only his guy could get it. That’s another one. And I’m pointing to the Kan the Kahan booty throw to win them the game essentially was another. So there’s there’s at least three there. They’re not superhuman. Every player in the league should be do that. Not Matt Jones, but to me, it’s the consistency with the players in the league who can do that. Before people get mad, and I don’t blame him if they do, cuz I sound like I’m, you know, peeing in the corn flakes. I’m just saying that the consistency with which he is making these plays because anybody can get lucky, but he’s consistently making the plays, Phil, which is good. It is good or he did it in that particular game. It is good and he is he is we’re still waiting good enough to the point now where we can say he’s elevating the group around them. They they they probably shouldn’t if you just looked at the talent and you didn’t know who they had a quarterback and you say give this team a league average quarterback. How many wins would they have through five games? How many wins do you think they would have through five games with a league average quarterback? One, two, maybe two. Two def I’d say Carolina probably. And then after that, I don’t know. I mean, they almost lost. They were they were two inches away from losing to the Dolphins on the road. Oh my god. I know. All right. Hey, we’ll be back in a second. [Music] Now, you bring up Drake May, but is it Drake or is it Stefon Digs? That, too. That was Kim Newton. That was first take. That’s Phil. I’m Tom. So, Phil, is it Drake or is it Stefon Diggs? What is this relationship right now morphing into? Second in the league right now. Meanwhile, uh Diggs is among guys with 15 catches or more in terms of reception percentage. Amra St. Brown at 85.4, Digs at 85.3. He’s caught 29 of the 34 balls directed his way. What say you on the relationship? And that percentage should be even higher. Had a drop early in that game that was the I think the lone target that was not a productive one for the Patriots. He was targeted on another throw. I don’t know if you get credit for this target. I I should know this in the in the official box score, but he had that critical defensive pass interference that he drew in the end zone which put them right on the doorstep at the end of the first half. This relationship is clearly the chemistry there is clearly blossoming. When you’re on the field for 30 snaps total and you get 12 targets, that is indicative of a quarterback who trusts that particular receiver. We’re going to get to the is Drake be too reliant on Stefon Diggs conversation. It’s working right now. That might happen if he if he somehow has a game where it’s 4 for 12 and not 10 for 12 catches and targets and it’s 40 yards instead of 140 yards, then we’ll have that conversation. But we’re not there yet. It’s two weeks in a row, 100 plus yards. And Tom, to me, the most encouraging thing about that Stfan Digs game was that he looked healthier than he’s looked. He’s creating yards after the catch. Almost 50% of his yards came after the catch on Sunday night. He did not look like a yak machine in camp. He did not look like a yak machine early this season. But the ability to pick up yards on those shorter throws and turn them into explosive gains is huge for a team that is lacking in explosive offensive talent. One thing that’s ironic is Drake May and Stefon Diggs reach a different height going to Buffalo where the last time Diggs was there was the last time he and Josh Allen played together. And that game, I think Stefon Diggs was screaming at Josh Allen in a playoff game on the sidelines. Is this a change, Stefon Diggs, that you say, I I’m glad that he’s part of Drake May’s uh present. Oh, you have to be happy about it right now because if he wasn’t here, who would be that guy for him? Early in the season, clearly Hunter Henry felt like his most dependable option. I still would put him very high on the list. But now to have another player and at that wide receiver position who can give you what Diggs has given you, it really is, Tom, it’s much closer to at least these last two games, what Diggs is giving Drake May is much closer to what he gave Josh Allen in Josh Allen’s third year to help take Josh Allen from one of the worst starting quarterbacks in football to one of the best very, very quickly. It’s much closer to that than anyone anticipated. the Patriots organization included. They were not expecting to get old Stfon Diggs, thousand yards, true number one differencemaking type of guy in in the the number one receiver sense of the word. Differencemaker in terms of being dependable and being useful and being good for sure. That’s why they paid him all that money. But 50 some odd yards in the LA or in 250 some odd yards in the last two games, I don’t think uh that was a pace they were anticipating. I wonder if a healthy digs would have been their first choice because the Patriots were adamant about wanting to make sure that Drake May was surrounded by the right support system and teammates. It’s why Joe Milton’s someplace else. Probably a helpful as to why Jaylen Pulk is someplace else. The Patriots have made Drake May and developing him the number one. You know, he’s their fair-haired boy. They’re going to do anything to to help young Drake along. Here’s some names though. T. Higgins, Chris Godwin, Kelvin Ridley, Brandon Aayuk, DeAndre Hopkins, Devonte Adams, Jacobe Myers, Cooper Cup, AJ Brown, DK Metaf. You can’t always get what you want. Phil, the kink slang about this, but if you try sometimes, you just might find you get what you need. I’m pretty sure that wasn’t the kinks initially at least. That wasn’t the kinks. It wasn’t the kinks. Um, listen, you’re the you’re the music guy here. He is what they need. They need him right now and they need him to stay healthy. They they need to But isn’t it funny honestly like all these guys that we’d spend early edition in Boston sports and I go, “Oh my god, Brandon Aayuka doesn’t want to come here.” And they found a guy Brandon Aayuka isn’t playing right now. Freaking banged up and they made an incredible push to sign him. It’s just it’s just funny how stuff goes. You know, folks, do they have to manage his snaps a little bit more, you think? And not manage his snaps, but maybe even manage his targets. Like, are you at all worried that he I’d like to see him being used almost too much? You want him for the stretch run, don’t you? I’d like to see them develop a secondary receiver whose name is not Hunter Henry. Um, I think Booty’s a a very reliable pass catcher. Didn’t like a couple of the penalties last night, Sunday night, excuse me. Um, but I think that this is where you miss Kendrick Bourne a little bit, a tiny bit. And I don’t think Demario Douglas is on the cusp of a breakthrough. It seems like the bus is has left the station and it’s going in a different direction. I’m not saying he’s getting released, but it seems like the destination they’re heading to right now does not have Deario Douglas significant contributor printed on the side. The one guy you’d love to become that guy is Kyle Williams. Ah, good point. third round rookie, somebody that could grow with Drake May. They had him out there. He was the other guy running routes alongside Stefon Diggs. And that twoman route concept where Diggs ends up catching that bomb down the right sideline. So, they’re trying to get him out there. They’re trying to get him involved in some explosive plays potentially. It’s just he’s not out there enough to be considered a a key piece just yet. Two more quick observations before we let you guys go. Um, the youth, as pointed out by Mike Vrabel in his press conference, was well served on Sunday night. Um, rookies and secondyear players, and I think that Mike related a story that that his dad mentioned it to him. Um, it’s a great point. Campbell, Wilson, May, Boragalis, Craig Woodson, and guys who are new to the program, guys who decided to come here or were drafted here. They have none of the taint of the last two years. They’re realizing something that they built and that has to make a big impact. I agree. And I asked, you know, Carlton Davis about just how few guys in that locker room, he’s one of the guys who’s who’s won at a high level. He and Milton Williams. I asked him if he feels as though this team, even though it’s early, has shown him characteristics of a winning at a high level potentially kind of group. And he says he does and he doesn’t want to make comparisons. And he was very careful. And his his voice even dropped uh a few notches on on the the volume meter there. It was like he didn’t want to get in trouble for Mike Vrabel, so he almost started whispering into the microphone. I don’t want to make a lot of comparisons, but I like what we have. He He clearly sees something in this group. And for it to be a group that is so loaded with youth, and for somebody who has won a Super Bowl to be able to still look at this team and say, “We could be going somewhere to me says a lot about those young guys, especially the somewhere that they are going. Is it the wild card? Is it challenging? Now they get the tiebreaker over the Bills for the AFC East divisional title. Is it playoffs? Is it deep in the playoffs? Is it outside the playoffs? We don’t know. But we’re happy you’re along with us for the ride. We’re getting ready for the Saints for the rest of the week. Okay. So, we’ll talk to you later. [Music]

Are the Patriots back? Tom E. Curran and Phil Perry react to the buzz around the Patriots after their statement win over the Bills. They discuss Drake Maye’s strong outing and take a closer look at the chemistry building between Maye and Stefon Diggs.

1:00 – The Patriots are back in postseason conversation
8:00 – Breaking down Drake Maye’s game management
18:00 – The chemistry between Diggs and Maye is blossoming

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