Throughout his first two career playoff starts, Patriots quarterback Drake Maye has experienced his share of growing pains. Still, Maye has delivered key plays that have helped New England reach the AFC Championship Game.<\/p>\n
With a trip to the Super Bowl now on the line, Maye\u2019s teammates continue to express confidence in the young quarterback despite some recent mistakes.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur quarterback continues to show up, especially in those moments where things can go left or right,\u201d wide receiver Stefon Diggs said. \u201cHe\u2019s making the right reads. He\u2019s making the right throws. He\u2019s rolling with the punches.<\/p>\n
\u201cPlayoff ball \u2014 it\u2019s not going to be pretty. I\u2019ll take an ugly win any day.\u201d<\/p>\n
Maye has fumbled six times and lost three over the Patriots\u2019 first two postseason games. Nonetheless, he has shown a short memory, bouncing back to make pivotal plays \u2014 such as fourth quarter touchdown passes to Hunter Henry against the Chargers and Kayshon Boutte versus the Texans \u2014 in order to secure a pair of wins.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think none of his plays are really bad plays. It\u2019s just part of football. I watch him, and his demeanor and his temperament throughout the game, it never changes. I think he\u2019s consistent,\u201d Diggs said. \u201cThe more people that band behind him, you see it. Once he gets rolling, he\u2019s real scary. He\u2019s a young quarterback but he has had a maturation process second to none in my opinion.\u201d<\/p>\n
As Maye and the Patriots now prepare for a Denver Broncos defense that led the league in sacks, ball security will be a major point of emphasis. That focus extends beyond Maye, as well, as the quarterback has not always been the primary cause of the fumbles.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have to be able to not get careless with the football. We can\u2019t be reckless,\u201d head coach Mike Vrabel said. \u201cA lot of it is operation. We had two turnovers where we all weren\u2019t on the same page. Not only is that a negative play if you don\u2019t have everybody on the same page, but even worse, you lose the football or if you don\u2019t have somebody on the same page and they blitz, somebody gets hurt. Those are the things we talk about when we\u2019re not on the same page. I think that the operation is going to be critical.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Throughout his first two career playoff starts, Patriots quarterback Drake Maye has experienced his share of growing pains.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":695058,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2050],"tags":[7,1167,249,52113,91604,2326,2094,6,208],"class_list":{"0":"post-695057","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-england-patriots","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-new-england","10":"tag-new-england-patriots","11":"tag-new-england-patriots-first-read","12":"tag-new-england-patriots-playoffs","13":"tag-newengland","14":"tag-newenglandpatriots","15":"tag-nfl","16":"tag-patriots"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115935978995783751","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/695057","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=695057"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/695057\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/695058"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=695057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=695057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=695057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}