Now that the 2024 NFL schedule has been released, we know exactly when and where Jerod Mayo’s new-look New England team will take the football field this fall.
Now, we can turn our attention to the biggest question facing those in the Foxborough football offices: When will No. 3 overall pick and franchise-QB-in-waiting Drake Maye take over the starting job in New England?
With the schedule in hand, we all know that it’s going to be a rocky start to September in Mayo’s first season stepping into the big sideline shoes of Bill Belichick. The Patriots are the NFL’s biggest Week 1 underdog heading to Cincinnati for the opener against Joe Burrow, Jamar Chase and the Bengals.
We also all know that the only team New England faces in its first eight games of 2024 that didn’t have a winning record in 2023 is the Jets and in case you didn’t recall New York is a Super Bowl contender that fields one of the more talented rosters in football as it welcomes Aaron Rodgers back under center for a what Gang Green hopes is a more extended stay from their Hall of Fame signal caller.
The harsh reality is the Patriots are going to lose a LOT of football games in the months of September and October. That will be true regardless of who is playing quarterback, be it an experienced journeyman or ready-or-not rookie.
Enter Jacoby Brissett, the former third-round pick of the Patriots who signed on this offseason to be the carefully chosen seat-holder for whichever QB New England was obviously going to select with its top pick. A man with eight NFL seasons under his belt, work with the Patriots, Colts, Dolphins, Browns and Commanders. He brings an 18-30 record in his 48 starts, having never secured a winning record in a season in which he started games.
Brissett has been described by many as a would-be starter and sure-fire mentor as the oldest, most experienced quarterback in the room.
He sounds and seems comfortable in such a role, at least in part thanks to a career in which he’s both been the guy stepping into the starting spotlight and stepping out of it.
“I’m a teammate, first. I hope I can be a good teammate to not only (Maye), but to everybody on this team,” Brissett told local reporters this week. “How do I make it not awkward? I’m just gonna be myself. I have no ego in this. Whatever is for me is going to happen for me. Whatever is for the next person is going to happen for the next person. It’s about being ready whenever your time comes. The thing that got me to that mindset was my rookie year hear. Take no reps in training camp or OTAs with the first team.
And Week 2 I’m in the game against the Dolphins. You never know when your opportunity is going to come, it’s about being ready. Whatever is going to happen for me is going to happen for me.
“Everybody wants to be the guy and everybody is competing to be the guy. That’s what you want. If none of us wanted to play, then our room would be messed up. I know I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t want to play and didn’t think I could do the job myself. I think (Maye) thinks that of himself, too. And he should.”
Everyone outside the room and the building does, too. It’s only mid-May, but all of Patriot Nation is already obviously wondering when Maye will take over for Brissett.
Does he win the job from Day 1, beating out the veteran in the summer the way that Mac Jones so obviously did back in 2021?
Is Brissett signed, sealed and delivered to have his hands under David Andrews butt in Cincy and for, say, the first month?
Is Brissett at least penciled in at this point to take the likely lumps of the first half of a difficult schedule like some middle-age middle reliever saving his manager’s bullpen in a blowout baseball game while Maye is groomed and prepared in the background?
Maybe Maye won’t be seen until some natural break in the schedule, a final four games of work after the early December bye week?
Is it really possible, as some analysts have suggested, that Maye sits out the entirety of his rookie season to season himself on the perfect path to success that’s been walked in some fashion by guys like Rodgers, Patrick Mahomes and Jordan Love?
That feels almost impossible to fathom at this early point, even if we’ve yet to see Maye take part in a full-squad workout or padded practice.
It seems a virtual certainty that at some point between the Sept. 8 trip to Cincinnati and the January finale against the Bills at Gillette, Maye will make his NFL starting debut.
The path to that game, the path to the most important start seen in New England in some time? Well that’s very much in question these days, even with Drake Maye is the unquestioned, for-better-or-worse future of the franchise in New England.
When that Patriots’ future actually arrives?
Your guess might be as good as Jacoby Brissett’s and Jerod Mayo’s!
The Drake Maye Watch is officially underway for all of us, and it’s only May.