Drake Maye and Josh McDaniels have been a match made in heaven this season for the New England Patriots.

After hiring Mike Vrabel to replace Jerod Mayo as head coach, the Patriots brought McDaniels back for his third stint with the organization as offensive coordinator. McDaniels played a role in New England’s six Super Bowl titles with the legendary Tom Brady at QB, and he saw some success with then-rookie signal-caller Mac Jones in 2021.

Maye showed flashes of his potential as a rookie in Alex Van Pelt’s system and has since taken his game to an MVP level under McDaniels. The 23-year-old experienced some growing pains in McDaniels’ offense during training camp, but his quick development has propelled the Patriots to a 12-3 record and their first playoff berth since ’21.

Maye’s ability to immediately thrive in McDaniels’ system speaks to his intelligence and work ethic. McDaniels and the Patriots run the Erhardt-Perkins offense, in which the QB reads the defense and coverages. That’s opposed to the pure progression offense, which teams use to take pressure off the QB by allowing them to focus solely on their receiving options.

Former Patriots QB Brian Hoyer knows how challenging it can be to learn a system like McDaniels’.

“There’s a lot of things that go into playing quarterback for the Patriots,” he said on the latest Next Pats Podcast. “You’ve got to have the Mike calls on every single play for the run game and the pass game. You have to adjust protection. You have to alert the plays to the proper read.

“And so, they’re putting a lot on the quarterback, whereas the West Coast (offense), the idea is to take a lot off of the quarterbacks so they can play fast.”

McDaniels recently joined Hoyer’s Quick Snap podcast to discuss his offensive philosophy, and how Maye has embraced the challenge in his first year with the longtime OC. He likened the process of learning his system to climbing a mountain.

“Just starting that process back in April when he got in here, we had a really good start together,” he said of Maye. “The communication aspect of it, the responsibility at the line of scrimmage, understanding what defenses are presenting and how does that impact what we’re doing? …

“I’m biased because I’ve only done it one way. I know there’s a lot of other ways to do it, and I know there’s this train of thought to take that responsibility off of them and make their life simpler and they’ll play better. That’s fine, and other people can claim that that’s the case. For us, we’ve always looked at it as a little bit of a mountain, and you start climbing it, and as you’re going up, you learn how to do more things to help you get to the top. When you get to the top and you’ve learned how to do all these things well, the view from the top is pretty good.

“You know how to handle different pressures, you know how to solve your problems in protection, you know how to get out of a bad run play, you know how to read coverages when they’re trying to disguise on you, you know how to deal with third down in the red zone in two minute and all those other things because you’ve gone through the labor and you’ve done the work. Drake deserves all the credit because he came in and he started learning and hasn’t stopped.”

Maye is a legitimate MVP candidate in his second season. Through 15 games, he has completed a league-best 70.9 percent of his passes for 3,947 yards and 25 touchdowns. He has also rushed for four TDs.

How close is Maye to reaching the top of McDaniels’ mountain?

“He’s pretty dang close. He really is. It’s been amazing,” Hoyer said on the Next Pats Podcast. “It was clear last year as a rookie, Drake was a very smart quarterback. If he made a mistake, he corrected it almost instantaneously. And when Josh was hired here, I was like, this is a tremendous opportunity for Drake to work with this guy because he’s gonna coach him the right way. …

“I went to a few training camp practices and there were some struggles, but you would see Drake taking those steps of alerting to the right play, getting to the right receiver in the progression. Even though we’re talking about peer progression or coverage reads, a coverage read still has a progression. … So you saw that grow, and man, this season has been so fun to watch. …

“He’s taking the physical part, that we all knew he was supremely talented in, and he’s pairing it with that mental part. That’s why he’s been an MVP candidate at only 23 years old.”

Maye will look to stay hot when the Patriots take on the New York Jets next Sunday.

Check out the full Next Pats Podcast conversation with Brian Hoyer, including a whiteboard breakdown of the two offensive systems, on YouTube below: