Drake Maye is still a young NFL player, and there's a lot that remains unknown about his personality. Yet if he is at all a spiteful person in any way, he's now been given a great reason to hold a grudge against the Chicago Bears organization and specifically general manager Ryan Poles.
That reason comes from information reported by Ty Dunn of Go Long, who looked at the process at play in the Bears' front office ahead of last year's draft, when Chicago held the No. 1 overall pick. The Bears, of course, selected Caleb Williams out of USC, ahead of LSU's Jayden Daniels and Maye from UNC.
According to Dunn, Poles led the charge on openly mocking Maye's game film, encouraging everyone else in the room to essentially point and laugh at any of the quarterback's misfires or bad plays at UNC.
"Clicker in hand, at the center of the room, Poles repeatedly hit rewind on errant passes and it didn't take long for those echoes of 'Geez!' to turn into outright laughter," Dunn wrote. "Poles and his confidants were not interested in sparking a substantive conversation about the North Carolina quarterback. This draft meeting resembled a bully in the high school cafeteria seeking toadies - any veneer of scouting objectivity was shed. ... All funky plays were magnified and mocked to make it appear as if this is exactly who he'd become as a pro quarterback.
"One scout described the scene to Dunn thusly: "They made fun of him. They laughed. The GM laughed Drake Maye off the screen, and cut the tape off."
According to one scout, the Bears' process of taking Williams at No. 1 was "a rigged trial," as Poles had his mind made up long before any type of evaluation process.
Neither quarterback lit the world on fire as a rookie, though Maye posted comparable -- if not better -- stats to Williams with less playing time. And notably, when the two teams and quarterbacks faced off last year in Week 10, Maye and the Patriots came away with a 19-3 victory. Maye was 15-for-25 for 184 yards with a touchdown and an interception wile rushing four times for 24 yards. Williams had a worse day, going 16-for-30 for 120 yards with no touchdowns or picks while taking nine sacks in the loss.
The Patriots and Bears will not meet this season, but the next time they do, Maye might be carrying a little bit of added motivation to the field.
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