All signs point to USC’s Caleb Williams going to the Bears with the No. 1 overall pick in the first round of the 20224 NFL Draft that is now just five long weeks away!
Many signs point to LSU’s Jayden Daniels landing with the Commanders with the No. 2 overall pick.
That means the QB-needy and QB-desperate Patriots will have a decision to make at No. 3 overall. Take the next-best passer on the draft board or take the best player available or trade down and take the bounty of draft capital that would come in such a defining move?
Well, the answer here is simple and grows simpler with each day of paralysis by analysis swirling around UNC QB Drake Maye.
Eliot Wolf, I would never pretend to be as qualified as you. Not nearly as experienced. Or really experienced in personnel at all. Nope. Not the son of an NFL GM. Didn’t have a stop watch in my hand at the Combine at the age of 10.
And certainly it’s your career is to some degree on the line as much as the Patriots’ future is with the No. 3 pick, Mr. Wolf. Me? I’m just some know-nothing mediot writing a for-entertainment-purposes-only column.
If I’m wrong the worst that happens is that I deal with even more Twitter trolls than usual. Wahhhhh me!
Yet, here’s one simple piece of advice Mr. Wolf – Take Drake Maye!
Sure, you Maye or Maye not regret it (see what I did there?), but it’s really the only decision at this point.
Life is all about decisions. Opportunities. And, yes, regret.
It seems pretty clear at this point, though, that the Patriots would potentially regret passing on Maye and his potential more than they’ll regret drafting him.
Sure, the backup QB NFL analyst brain trust is indeed dramatically split on Maye.
Dan Orlovsky has said Maye would need to sit for a couple years before he could be close to ready to play in an NFL game. And we know that’s unlikely to happen anywhere in the NFL, certainly not in New England where Jacoby Brissett is apparently the starter until the next big thing is ready to go. That can’t been 17 games. Can’t be.
Chris Simms’ buttoned-up view on Maye is that he’s the sixth-best QB in this draft. We’ll just leave that right where it is and for what it’s worth in clicks and downloads.
Oh, and a sampling of NFL executives by The Athletic had Maye as one of only four players on each respondent’s list of top-10 prospects in this draft class.
So, like so many aspects of this modern world we live in, Maye is a polarizing topic. He has his very vocal, passionate critics. And he has some extremely optimistic proponents.
His reality is probably somewhere in the middle. Sure he has the physical tools of some combination of frequent comparisons to Bills’ franchise mainstay Josh Allen and Chargers’ physical phenom Justin Herbert.
That’s more than a half a billion dollars in NFL QB, FWIW!
The most important reality is that the Patriots need a QB. The way the NFL works is that when you are a bad team in need of a QB – picking No. 3 overall certainly means you are a bad team – you need to take a shot at a QB in the draft. Usually the higher you pick the greater your chances of success, even if guys like Tom Brady, Dak Prescott, Joe Montana or Brock Purdy paint a misleadingly different picture.
So despite all the talk, bluster, analysis and media misdirection of the past months and coming five weeks, Wolf and the Patriots really have one simple answer for their current lot in life.
His name is Drake Maye.
He’s the best option likely available for Jerod Mayo, Wolf and the rest of the New England collaboration to turn things around at Gillette Stadium as quickly as possible.
Whether you like it or not.
Whether you even like Maye or not.