It’s hard to know what to reasonably expect from rookie quarterback Drake Maye ahead of this year’s NFL season.
Until his debut in a Patriots uniform, an unhealthy mix of excitement and anxiety is allowed to run rampant. After a rocky marriage between late-period Bill Belichick and not-good-period Mac Jones, a lot is riding on Jerod Mayo and Eliot Wolf to get it right with Maye. The debate over whether the North Carolina product should start in Week 1 hangs over everything.
NFL insider Tom Curran reported on NBC Sports Boston that he expects the Patriots to find a “window” for Maye to start in early November. But interestingly, Curran predicted that Maye would show shades of a former Patriots rookie quarterback in his debut season.
“To me, he’s going to have some games where he looks like 1993 Drew Bledsoe, who, at one point, had a five-pick game,” Curran said. “He was horrendous. He was 1-and-11. They won their last four games in a row, Bledsoe was unbelievable in some of them because he finally started to understand what was being asked of him and accepted it.”
Adam Jones reacted to these comments by Curran on WEEI’s Jones and Mego with Arcand on Tuesday. Listen to the full segment above.
“The Drew Bledsoe comp is an interesting one because if he turns out to be Drew Bledsoe, is that enough? I’ve said before, I’m not sure it is,” Jones said. “…It’s definitely better than Mac Jones, but I’m aiming a little higher than that.”
Jones went on to discuss how, in Bledsoe’s 1993 rookie season, he was given the starting job in Week 1, an opportunity he hopes will also be afforded to Maye.
“Here’s what I don't get about the Drew Bledsoe comp that he’s so adamant about,” Jones said. “To me, ‘Oh Drew Bledsoe got better at the end of his rookie year.’ Yeah, I wonder why… I wonder why he got better at the end of the year. Maybe it's because he started at the beginning of the year and he figured something out.”
Jones believes Maye’s development will improve by starting from the get-go this season.
“To me there’s value in getting out there, learning on the fly, even if you get the crap kicked out of you,” Jones said. “Drew Bledsoe, I think was better for them, he was good at the end of the year, he was a Pro Bowler in year two. Starting him in year one wasn’t the problem.”
Jones says that if Maye needs more time to develop before the season starts, the Patriots should use the time given to them in the offseason and preseason.
“If he needs mental reps, if he needs to learn by watching, that’s what you use the preseason and the offseason for,” he said. “The games, I want him out there learning and getting better. He’s not going to do that holding a clipboard with his hat backwards watching effing Jacoby Brissett.”
Meghan Ottolini played devil’s advocate, though, arguing that there may be risks in exposing a rookie quarterback to the pressure of starting in Week 1.
“I’m afraid of a situation where he’s the kind of guy who goes in there, he feels like he has the weight of the world on his shoulders, and he’s a big kid who’s gotten by by having a good arm and being able to run and be athletic and it would stunt his development in other parts of the game,” Mego said.
Mego argued that this early start could weaken Maye in the long run as a quarterback.
“Maybe that doesn’t look like a terrible performance, sometimes it does,” she said. “But maybe he doesn’t become the quarterback that eventually he could be because he’s stuck in this kind of arrested development.”
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