Can Drake Maye End the QB Nature-vs.-Nurture Debate Once and for All?
The second-year passer had a rough supporting cast in 2024, and it doesn’t appear to be a whole lot better this season. Yet the Patriots are expecting big things anyway. Can he continue to find success in spite of his surroundings?
From 2011 to 2022, NFL teams drafted 17 quarterbacks with top-five picks. Seven of those passers did not sign a second contract with the teams that drafted them, and that list doesn’t include guys like Blake Bortles, Carson Wentz, and Jared Goff, who were all jettisoned by their original franchises before their extensions really kicked in. Even with a premium draft pick, finding a team’s forever quarterback can be a 50/50 proposition. It’s difficult—if not impossible—to say why that is. Are NFL teams bad at evaluating top prospects? Or are they just bad at developing them? Was Patrick Mahomes always destined for greatness, or did landing with a Hall of Fame coach in Kansas City put him on that track?
The nature vs. nurture debate is fascinating, but without counterfactuals, it will stay impossible to settle. We’ll never know how Mahomes’s career would have turned out in the alternate universe where he landed in Chicago or Cleveland. Maybe Mitchell Trubisky would be the one winning all the Super Bowls and expecting an invite to Taylor Swift’s wedding if the Chiefs had drafted him instead of the Bears. It’s unlikely, but we can’t say for sure. Even beyond our inability to know the unknowable, the nature vs. nurture question is difficult to answer because of the simple fact that good quarterbacks make their surroundings appear better, while bad quarterbacks generally have the opposite effect.
Which brings us to Drake Maye. The New England Patriots’ latest hope for replacing Tom Brady is entering his second season in New England after being chosen third in the 2024 draft. Maye started his rookie season on the bench, and some argued that he should have remained there to avoid the damage that playing with possibly the league’s worst supporting cast could have had on his development. To call the 2024 Patriots offensive line patchwork would have been an insult to patches. The group of pass catchers wasn’t much better. And the offensive coordinator, Alex Van Pelt, had just one year of play calling experience—with the 2009 Bills—before the season. It was not the most nurturing environment for a quarterback who was seen as a raw project by many, including the coach who led the Patriots to six Super Bowl wins.
Nevertheless, Maye eventually started his first NFL game in mid-October, and it wasn’t the disaster many had envisioned. The supporting cast was as bad as advertised, and it often appeared as if Maye was playing 1-on-11. But he came out of the season with a respectable stat line, finishing 18th in QBR, just ahead of fellow rookie Bo Nix, and 16th in dropback success rate. With Jayden Daniels posting top-of-the-league numbers in Washington and Nix helping the Broncos get back to the playoffs, Maye’s league-average performance didn’t garner a lot of attention outside New England, but it did provide the Patriots with hope that they had found their next franchise quarterback. If Maye could hold his own in those dreadful conditions, imagine what he could do with a competent supporting cast.
QBs on the Rise
This year, though, Pats fans will likely have to use their imaginations once again. The most notable addition to the New England offense this offseason has been Stefon Diggs, a 31-year-old receiver who’s coming off two underwhelming seasons and an ACL tear. The team drafted left tackle Will Campbell with the fourth pick, and he should be an upgrade over Vederian Lowe and Chukwuma Okorafor. But he’s still just a rookie (who faced questions about his viability at tackle during the draft process due to his less than ideal arm length). The offensive line will also be “bolstered” by the signings of center Garrett Bradbury, whom the Vikings had no interest in bringing back this season, and right tackle Morgan Moses, who’s on his third team in three years. Plus, Maye will have a new play caller—Josh McDaniels, who’s returning to his old post as New England offensive coordinator after a disastrous stint as the Raiders head coach. Time will tell whether that’s a positive development, but McDaniels’s track record outside of the years he worked with Brady isn’t encouraging. The upgrades to Maye’s supporting cast have been marginal, at best, and overall, this still looks like one of the worst offensive situations a quarterback could find themselves in across the NFL.
Yet the Patriots are expecting a second-year leap out of their highly drafted quarterback. And if Maye can overcome or elevate these less than nurturing surroundings, it will be a win for the “nature” side of the quarterback debate—and confirmation that New England has found its next franchise passer.
If Maye doesn’t turn into that guy for the Patriots, it won’t be due to a lack of talent. At 6-foot-4 and 225 pounds, he’s got the prototypical size of a star quarterback. He’s got an arm that puts no limitations on his game, and he might be the best athlete on the Pats roster. I could rip off more lines from his scouting report, but let’s just watch him in action. What do you hope to see from a franchise quarterback? Maye has put it on film.
Do you want quick processing and anticipatory throws? Watch him come off his first look and fire a pass into a backside window with zero hesitation.
Do you want ball placement? It doesn’t get much better than this perfectly located pass in the red zone that not only beats tight coverage but also leads Hunter Henry into the end zone for the touchdown.
Even when there isn’t a clear throwing window, Maye can create one. Notice how his shoulder feint puts the Cardinals defender on the wrong foot before he whips a pass back in the other direction.
Here’s Maye tossing a perfectly weighted ball over the second level of the defense and getting it down before the safety can converge on the receiver.
Maye can make plays with his legs if the pass rush gives him an opening.
And he can deploy his arm in creative ways.
How about dealing with pressure? Here the Bills get multiple unblocked rushers into Maye’s pocket, and he calmly delivers a third-down pass to his tight end.
One last clip, I swear: This one is ruled incomplete, but it’s still impressive and more proof that Maye has otherworldly throwing ability. Even while retreating against intense pressure, Maye makes a cross-body throw 30 yards downfield and puts it in a spot that only his receiver can reach.
I could keep going, but we’d be here all day. The point is that Maye is as talented as any quarterback in the NFL, full stop. His ceiling is unbelievably high—but it’s also difficult to place his floor. There are flaws in Maye’s game heading into year two. Decision-making is at the top of the list. Maye doesn’t make a lot of mistakes—he finished just outside the top 20 and right behind Jalen Hurts and Baker Mayfield in turnover-worthy play rate last season, per Pro Football Focus—but the ones he does make can be infuriating for a coaching staff. Maye’s mistakes are often the result of trying to do too much or having too much faith in his teammates to make a play. And as he heads into his second season, he still seems to be learning when it’s OK to give up on a play. In his first drive of the 2025 preseason, Maye coughed up the football after throwing a stiff arm at a Washington pass rusher while attempting to throw the ball away.
First-year Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel called it “a bad decision” after the game. “We’re going to need better from him,” Vrabel said. “I think he knows that. That’s obvious. It wasn’t there. We just have to be able to find a way to get rid of the football or take a sack and punt and play defense.”
You’re not getting the whole Drake Maye experience without the out-of-structure playmaking, but there’s a time and place for it—and third down near midfield isn’t the time to be forcing a throwaway when a sack would lead to the same result: the punt team trotting onto the field. The next step in Maye’s development will come when he finds the right balance between making plays and managing a game. As McDaniels said after the Washington game, that should come with more experience.
“Hopefully, it won’t be a tough line to straddle,” McDaniels said. “I think he’s still learning all of those things. He’s such a gifted athlete. A lot of guys that play this position that have the ability to throw it but also to move … and extend plays, they have to find that line themselves, honestly. We can tell them all we want, ‘Don’t make a bad play.’ But I’m going to be the first one in the end zone [celebrating] when he extends a play.”
McDaniels may not be able to teach Maye when to give up on a play, but if he’s calling plays that work—and Maye’s teammates are doing their jobs well—there will be less pressure on the young quarterback to create outside the structure of the offense. McDaniels was able to give that support to Mac Jones in 2021, but the Patriots had a better offensive line then and a stronger run game. It remains to be seen whether New England can be efficient on the ground in 2025, but it certainly wasn’t during Maye’s rookie season. Because of a poorly designed and executed first-down offense, Maye was put in a lot of second-and-long situations. To his credit, he was able to get the offense back on track most of the time, and he finished 10th in success rate on second-and-7 or longer, per TruMedia. But a lot of that success was driven by Maye’s ability to extend plays. When you take out plays when Maye didn’t scramble out of the pocket, he drops down to 15th in success rate.
When I visited Vikings camp for their joint practices against the Patriots earlier this month, the teams were working on second-and-long situations. It was a practice environment, so I don’t want to read too much into it, but Maye wasn’t as reliant on his legs to move the football against Minnesota’s chaotic defense. With McDaniels taking over as play caller, the Patriots are giving Maye more command at the line of scrimmage. The system gives the quarterback the power to change plays, and this season, he’ll be expected to fix any issues in protection before the snap. He got the ultimate test in that going up against a Brian Flores–coached unit. And Vrabel was pleased with what he saw from his young quarterback, highlighting Maye’s pre-snap communication and post-snap decision-making.
From my vantage point, Maye wasn’t playing conservatively. He pushed the ball downfield when the protection allowed for it. The highlight of the day came during the two-minute drill segment of practice. The Vikings were aligned in a blitz look with seven defenders on the line of scrimmage. Maye adjusted the protection to pick up the pressure, which bought him enough time to hit running back TreVeyon Henderson down the field for what would have been a game-winning touchdown.
The play didn’t require a highlight-worthy throw, and Maye didn’t use any of his athleticism to make it happen. But the read and the adjustments that gave him the time to make it were signs of his progress and perhaps a glimpse of what this Patriots offense could be when Maye gains more experience as a true signal caller—and New England gives him a more nurturing environment. For now, that last part feels like a pipe dream. Outside of Diggs, Maye will be throwing to Kayshon Boutte and DeMario Douglas, and he’ll once again be playing behind one of the worst offensive lines in football. But while Maye hasn’t been set up for success in his second season, we saw in 2024 that he’s got enough natural ability to find it anyway.
