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Does Devin McCourty think Drake Maye is MVP frontrunner?
“I think when you're a quarterback in this league, and your team's winning and you're playing at a high level, that makes you the guy to talk about."
After helping lead the Patriots to a hard-fought road win over the Buccaneers on Sunday, Patriots QB Drake Maye has held court as the frontrunner for NFL MVP across several oddsmakers.
Count former Patriots safety and current NBC broadcaster Devin McCourty among those who have been impressed with the play of the second-year QB. But McCourty believes that Maye isn’t necessarily the frontrunner — at least not at this stage of the season.
“I think when you’re a quarterback in this league, and your team’s winning and you’re playing at a high level, that makes you the guy to talk about,” McCourty said Thursday on WEEI’s “The Greg Hill Show”. “Whether it was Jayden Daniels last year as a rookie, C.J. Stroud when he was a rookie, Matthew Stafford right now, even at his older age — when you’re quarterbacking a top-level team that’s going out there executing, you should be spoken about in a high regard.”
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“Like Jonathan Taylor and Matthew Stafford, to me, would have a leg up,” McCourty continued. “But I think it’s crazy — if anybody would have said two years ago, ‘We’re going to get a quarterback in Drake Maye, and in his second year, he’s going to be top five in MVP talks.’ Like, I would have said, ‘Hey, give me that right now, that’s ridiculous.’ I think that’s what he’s played his way into.”
Entering Thursday’s primetime matchup against the Jets, Maye is completing 71.7 percent of his throws for 2,555 yards, 19 touchdowns and just five interceptions. He has also rushed for 283 yards and an additional two touchdowns.
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Taylor has been a force in the trenches for the Colts so far this season, rushing for 1,139 yards and 15 touchdowns through 10 games for Indy, while the 37-year-old Stafford is putting together a renaissance season on the West Coast with a league-leading 25 touchdowns and just two interceptions.
Even if Maye does come up short in the MVP race this winter, the 23-year-old QB’s ascension as one of the top playmakers in the league has Patriots fans relishing the sight of a franchise QB commanding an offense in Foxborough once again.
But McCourty also wanted no part of any discourse regarding Maye drawing comparisons to his former QB in Tom Brady.
“Way too early,” McCourty said of those comparisons. “I mean, Drake’s got to put together a lot of seasons for me to even think about uttering him and Tom Brady. I don’t think it’s too early to break down the early part of Tom Brady’s career and compare, because when you work in media, that’s what you do. You have to, it’s fun to do.
“But I think overall, to mention him and mention Brady, and what Brady was able to do in New England, is just too soon. But you enter those conversations if you get to the Super Bowl. You win a Super Bowl, you enter the conversation to be spoken about with anybody. But I still think that’s a time away before we can enter Drake Maye into there.”
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