Bill O’Brien wasn’t a fan of sports-radio talk about Drake Maye missing Vrabel’s intro
"The press conferences are great, but who cares who’s at the press conference?”
While Drake Maye was celebrating his engagement in Mexico this week, the Patriots QB was catching some flak on the airwaves in Boston.
Maye found himself embroiled in an arduous sports radio narrative on Wednesday after 98.5 The Sports Hub’s Michael Felger took umbrage with the rookie QB missing Mike Vrabel’s introduction as head coach of the Patriots on Monday.
“It’s not like this guy, this kid, is like an electrician and he gets four weeks (off) and he’s got three days and then he’s back on the job,” Felger said of Maye during Wednesday’s “Felger & Mazz” program. “He doesn’t have to report to work for three months!”
Maye, of course, had good reason to catch some rays this week — as he got engaged to his girlfriend, Ann Michael Hudson, during his trip.
But that did little to deter Felger from taking the QB to task for not being at Foxborough for Vrabel’s presser.
“OK. Congratulations,” Felger added after being told that Maye was engaged. “I told you, I got married and came back the first time — been married twice — the first one three days later I was in Ottawa covering the Bruins. On this (marriage) … (she) wanted to get married in the fall. ‘OK, well, I cover the Patriots.’ This was back in 2000. We got to do it on the bye week. We did it on the bye week and then three days later I was back in Foxboro.”
“All I’m saying is, it’s not unusual to make work a priority and for it to be important and for you to balance the two, Felger added. “So just because he got engaged, I’m still not sitting there saying, ‘OK, well I get why he didn’t come back.’ You can still come back. You can get engaged and come back. You can say, ‘I’ll meet you there in a couple days. ‘I’ll be back in 36 hours and do it then.’ That doesn’t mean anything to me.”
While Felger is no stranger to stirring up discourse on the radio, the entire narrative regarding Maye’s absence was grating to current Boston College football coach Bill O’Brien.
“I just speak for myself, I could care less,” O’Brien said on WEEI’s “The Greg Hill Show” on Thursday. “When the offseason program starts, you want the guy in the front row ready to go. It’s not about press conferences. Someone told me, ‘It’s all great at the press conference and then it’s all downhill from there.’ The press conferences are great, but who cares who’s at the press conference?”
For what it’s worth, Mac Jones was in attendance for Jerod Mayo’s introductory press conference at Gillette Stadium last January — only to get traded to the Jaguars just a few months later.
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