It’s funny how quickly things can change in the NFL.
A year ago, most New Englanders were hoping that Drake Maye could establish himself as a top-15 quarterback in the NFL during his first full season as a starter. Now, many of those same folks are upset that ESPN’s poll of executives, coaches and scouts only had Maye ranked as the eighth-best quarterback in the league.
Seeing Maye ranked behind Dak Prescott and Justin Herbert, in particular, was a bit jarring for anyone who watched Maye turn in an MVP-caliber performance last season, so the reaction from that polling has been widespread around New England and beyond this week.
Sports Illustrated’s Albert Breer has a theory on why evaluators might have been hesitant to vault Maye to the top of their lists.
“I do wonder if there is a little bit of a once bitten twice shy kind of thing,” Breer said on Early Edition. “When I’ve done these rankings the last couple of years, coming out of 2023, going into ’24, C.J. Stroud was really high on everybody’s list. Coming out of ’24, going into ’25, Jayden Daniels was really high on everybody’s list. So I think this may have affected both Drake Maye and Caleb Williams, where both of those guys had dynamite years last year and maybe some of the people who are voting now are like, ‘I’m gonna be a little more careful now on where I put those guys.'”
Breer would have ranked Maye sixth — behind Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen, Lamar Jackson, Joe Burrow and Matthew Stafford — but sees an extremely high potential for continued growth for the Patriots’ quarterback moving forward.
“I think there could be a point in two, three, four years where we’re talking about him and he’s the best player in football,” Breer said of Maye. “I think his ceiling is that high.”
Breer took that thought a step further, expanding his belief into the 2024 quarterback class as a whole.
“The three guys who went at the top of the ’24 class [Williams, Daniels, Maye], there’s a good chance we’re gonna look back in 10 years and say, like, ‘Wow, that was an all-timer,'” Breer said. “I think all three of them have a chance to be very, very good.”
