Would you rather have Drake Maye as Patriots’ quarterback or Bill Belichick as coach? It’s a no-brainer.
A celebrated past or promising future?
Beware, dear Patriots fans.
No, don’t worry — I’m not about to show you a reel of Jerod Mayo’s most passive coaching decisions. I don’t have the requisite 2 hours and 45 minutes to spare right now for that, and I assume you don’t either.
The word of warning is for this reason: What follows here is the sort of column that comes from what I like to call the Bye-Week Hypothetical genre.
It’s the sort of what-if, would-you-rather, can-you-imagine? angle that tends to get pecked out by the likes of, well, me and my sportswriting ilk during the local NFL team’s bye week, when the content machine must be fed even when there is no game to provide a win, or a loss, and all of the plays, details, and conclusions that serve as a week’s worth of sustenance.
So, here’s my obligatory and kind of irresistible Bye-Week Hypothetical.
Don’t say I didn’t warn you, though I’ll do my best to provide context to the content:
Would you rather, right now, have Bill Belichick as the Patriots’ head coach, or Drake Maye as their quarterback?
As someone who did not want to see Belichick go, even after a 4-13 record in 2023 and a string of mostly curious-to-dubious personnel decisions, the answer is easy.
It’s Maye, without hesitation or the hint of a second thought.
Maybe most of you will agree with that. I do hope it’s a vast majority.
Now, Belichick is the greatest coach in NFL history, absolutely, and you can argue among yourselves about who is runner-up.
With six Super Bowl victories as a head coach in an era designed to thwart potential dynasties, and two more as a superstar assistant coach with Bill Parcells’s Giants, his singular place atop the podium is definitive.
Yes, he had Tom Brady, the greatest quarterback ever, just as every other extraordinary coach since the days of leather helmets had extraordinary players. If you want to argue that Belichick was successful solely because of Brady, I suggest you watch the bookend Super Bowl victories over the Rams 17 seasons apart — presumably for the first time, yes? — then devour everything NFL Films has done on him over the years. (FYI: skip that “Dynasty” doc on Apple TV+. Trust me, it won’t help.)
The Krafts’ decision to fire Belichick after 24 seasons stung, and the charade of it being a mutual parting of the ways was borderline offensive. His unparalleled institutional knowledge of everything football, particularly his defensive expertise, is deeply missed with the current Patriots.
I fully expect Belichick — who turns 73 in April — to return to coaching next season and thrive again as he pursues Don Shula’s all-time wins record. His assorted TV gigs seem to have recharged him while also serving their true purpose as a reminder to potential employers that no one knows the game better than that surprisingly witty guy bantering with the Manning brothers every Monday night.
But if the choice is, as presented in our Bye-Week Hypothetical, having a legend-in-his-own-time coach leading a poor Patriots roster that he constructed, or having a 22-year-old quarterback who eight starts into his career has all the makings of a franchise cornerstone, the choice is easy.
You set aside the past. You sprint toward the future. You take the quarterback. You take Maye, and you do so without a doubt.
Now, I imagine some of you habitual contrarians might say, “Why couldn’t the Patriots do both — keep Belichick, draft Maye, and go from there?”
Fair question, and I think the answer is fairly clear, though it’s pieced together with anecdotal evidence rather than any certainty:
I don’t believe Belichick would have drafted Maye with the No. 3 overall pick in April’s NFL Draft.
Belichick, who was outstanding on Pat McAfee’s draft-night program, offered both praise and criticism for the North Carolina quarterback. But he did not sound as sold on him as he was on, say, Michigan’s J.J. McCarthy, who went 11th to the Vikings.
Some of Belichick’s draft-night comments on Maye:
- “He hasn’t played very much. He really doesn’t have a lot of experience. He’s going to need some work in reading defenses, reading coverages. He’s kind of quick to bail out of the pocket. He’s going to need to hang in there a little bit longer and find those receivers.”
- “Drake compares himself a lot [to] Josh Allen — we’ll see about that. There are some similarities in terms of size, but Josh Allen is a special player.”
- “This is a kid that can make all the throws, he just needs to be more consistent.”
I’d say Belichick saw Maye’s outstanding potential, but looked at him as a raw prospect who might need at least a season of backup duty before seeing the field. It’s not a bad assessment at all, because it’s a surprise to most of us that Maye has played at such a high level since taking over as the starter against the Texans in Week 6. His talent has been obvious, his poise is remarkable considering the degree of difficulty of playing behind a patchwork offensive line, and he seems a natural leader, the type who will tell you that a mistake was his fault, and you believe he feels that way, even if it obviously wasn’t his mistake at all.
Belichick will never admit it, especially if Maye continues on his rocket-ship trajectory, but I bet he would have traded down — maybe with the Giants at No. 6 — and collected some extra draft capital while taking a tackle or McCarthy in that spot.
And so we must look at this Belichick-or-Maye hypothetical as a true either/or situation. Given that there is no position more important in professional sports than quarterback, and given that it often takes multiple attempts (see: Mac Jones, Jacksonville) to find a competent one at a young age, there really is no difficulty to this.
The Patriots got a lot wrong in the offseason, including how they handled the final days of the greatest coach they will ever have. But they got the most important thing right: They found a quarterback in Maye capable of elevating the franchise from what it had fallen to in the seasons before he got here.
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