Drake Maye provides hope, much like the last high draft pick under center in Foxborough
Some of what Drake Maye has done in his first four starts for a 2024 Patriots team is similar to when Drew Bledsoe first arrived on the scene 31 years ago.
It happened so long ago now that just thinking about it makes this aging man’s sciatica act up. And I don’t even have sciatica as far as I know.
But two irrefutable sources, pro-football-reference.com and the calendar, do confirm that Drew Bledsoe – forever young in the minds of Patriots fans of a certain age, but somehow 52 years old now – made his debut more than 31 seasons ago, on Sept. 5, 1993.
Bledsoe, the No. 1 overall pick in that year’s draft out of Washington State, completed 14 of 30 passes for 148 yards, 2 touchdowns (the first of his career fittingly being a 54-yarder to tight end and first-ballot Hall of Nearly Canton-Worthy inductee Ben Coates) and an interception in the Patriots’ season-opening 38-14 loss to the Bills.
The game wasn’t just Bledsoe’s debut, of course. It was Bill Parcells’s introduction as the Patriots’ head coach. The habitually sarcastic Parcells was in Fatherly Tuna mode before the game, telling his kid QB, “Hey, this is not that hard. You can do this. I have confidence in you, or otherwise I wouldn’t have put you in this position.”
The headline on the Globe sports the morning after wasn’t quite so encouraging: “Patriots: New Era, Same Errors.” But columnist Michael Madden saw Bledsoe’s performance – even with the underwhelming overall stat line – as a beacon of hope among the thick fog of a full rebuild following the two-win 1992 season.
“Rookie mistakes?’’ he wrote. ‘’Yes, there were several, but there were more than several times when Bledsoe moved the Patriots with poise, aplomb, and an arm.”
Sound like anyone else you know? Or have been getting to know?
No, this visit to the Way Back Machine isn’t strictly for the usual nostalgic purposes. It’s because some – not all, but some – of what Drake Maye has done in his first four starts for a 2024 Patriots team desperate for their own beacon in the fog reminds me of when Bledsoe first arrived on the scene with a right arm loaded with hope 31 . . . an absurdly long time ago.
Maye, the No. 3 overall pick in April’s draft, is not a direct quarterbacking descendant of Bledsoe.
Both did debut absurdly young – Maye, who turned 22 on August 30, is the youngest quarterback in the NFL. Bledsoe actually was younger, playing the entire ‘93 season at age 21. But there are significant stylistic differences.
Maye has an excellent arm and throws a lovely deep ball, but Bledsoe’s laser-rocket arm was a little stronger, and yet oddly erratic on deep throws.
Maye is an exciting runner who has already gained 209 yards on the ground. Bledsoe had the mobility of one of those retro, buzzing electronic football games that never worked the way you wanted; he did not surpass 209 rushing yards in his career until Week 7 in 1997, his fourth season.
It should be pretty obvious what they have most in common: the ability to make three or four “wow!” plays a game, the kind that promises a bright future on even the most dismal Sunday afternoons.
Watching Maye roll out Sunday and throw a dart to a DeMario Douglas with a defensive back draped all over him was reminiscent of how Bledsoe could stick the ball into Coates no matter how many defenders were dangling off his limbs.
And Maye’s improvised tying touchdown pass on the final play of regulation, when he ran around for nearly 12 seconds before winging an answered prayer to Rhamondre Stevenson? Bledsoe, for all of his talent, did not have anything like that in his repertoire.
Those ‘93 Patriots – like the current edition – often got in their own way. They did not win until Week 5, a 23-21 road victory over the Cardinals. They lost 10 of their first 11 games, eight by six points or fewer.
And then, all of a sudden, the fog lifted. The Patriots won four straight to end the ‘93 season, all individually memorable, thrilling, or just plain weird games:
¤ A 7-2 victory over the Bengals (I believe Bledsoe went 2 for 4 with four RBIs, will double check).
¤ A 20-17 win over the Browns (Cleveland coach Bill Belichick, who had cut beloved quarterback Bernie Kosar in November, needed a police escort to get off the field).
¤ A 38-0 thumping of the Colts in which the Patriots ran for 256 yards and Bledsoe had a perfect 158.3 QB rating on 11 passing attempts).
¤ And the real moment of hope: A season-ending 33-27 overtime victory over the Dolphins in which Bledsoe went 27 of 43 for 329 yards and 4 TDs, including a 36-yard winner to Michael Timpson on a slant-and-go 4:44 into overtime. (”This kid can throw,’’ said Parcells afterward. “Ain’t no doubt about that. He’ll have them all scared in another year.”)
Now, I’d suggest that the entire scene was the perfect way to head into the offseason, but the fear, as veteran Patriots fans may recall, was that the franchise was heading somewhere else: to St. Louis. We weren’t sure there would be another year.
Said Bledsoe: “Hopefully we’ll be playing here next year. If the players and fans had anything to say about it, we’d stay. Unfortunately, we don’t. This area deserves a winning football team. It’s been awhile since they’ve had one and I think we’re going to be one.”
He was right on, though in the grand scope of how the Patriots became not just a winning football team, but the greatest dynasty the NFL has ever seen . . . well, that probably didn’t go quite as he’d imagined.
And so here we are now, a two-decade dynasty in the past, and Maye standing here now as the singular symbol of better days to come.
Perhaps the most illustrative aspect of Bledsoe’s rookie season is the level of support he had – from Parcells to talent such as Coates, Andre Tippett (who collected his 100th and final career sack in that Miami game), Bruce Armstrong, and Vincent Brown – compared to what Maye must navigate now.
Maye’s relative success given the degree of difficulty posed by the utter lack of talent surrounding him in the huddle is remarkable. His offensive line is porous. Stevenson has 82 yards in his last 37 carries. Some of the receivers are better at using their hands to type out cryptic gripes on social media than they are at catching the football.
Ultimately, the ‘24 Patriots aren’t going to emulate the ‘93 Patriots. This team isn’t winning four in a row to close the season. It might not win four, period. But that’s fine.
What they must do – this is imperative, Eliot Wolf – is match that the Patriots’ ability to identify, draft, and develop legitimate talent early in the Bledsoe Era, from Willie McGinest in ‘94 to Ty Law, Curtis Martin, and Ted Johnson in ‘95, and then Terry Glenn (yes, against Parcells’s will), Lawyer Milloy, and Tedy Bruschi in ‘96.
This Patriots team needs so much. Maye is already being asked to do too much. But just like in 1993, at least they have the quarterback, and there’s no more important piece than that.
Get him some help, and he’ll have them all scared in . . . well, let’s call it a couple of years.
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