Drake Maye and the Patriots visit the Dolphins on Sunday afternoon.
Drake Maye and the Patriots visit the Dolphins on Sunday afternoon.Barry Chin/Globe Staff
Picked-up pieces en route to a “big game” for the Patriots in Miami . . .
⋅ Fair or unfair, it feels like every Patriots game now is a referendum on second-year quarterback Drake Maye.
Love the Drake? Hate the Drake?
Drake is the next Drew Bledsoe. Swell.
Drake is the next Mac Jones. Boo.
Maye just turned 23. He has played only 14 NFL games, starting 13. Only once has he won a game in which he started and finished (19-3 at Chicago last November).
He is earnest, athletic, has three older brothers who are all athletes, and was anointed our franchise quarterback when the Patriots made him the third overall pick of the 2024 NFL Draft.
We know we have to be patient with any young NFL quarterback not named Tom Brady. We remember Bledsoe losing eight of his first nine starts in 1993, then finishing his rookie season with four straight wins and taking the Patriots to the playoffs (a 20-13 loss to Bill Belichick’s Browns) in his second season. Two years later, Bledsoe had the Patriots in the Super Bowl.
It doesn’t look like things are going to happen quickly for the Drake. The Patriots were a dismal 4-13 in his rookie season and Maye’s Year 2 got off to a bad start in last Sunday’s 20-13, flatline home loss to the Raiders.
Now the Patriots are playing a Dolphins team that was waxed, 33-8, by the ordinary Colts. The Dolphins might be the worst team in football (or maybe the Patriots are?) and hip young coach Mike McDaniel is on the hot seat. This would seem to make the Patriots favorites, but New England has lost eight of its last nine games against the Fish, never beaten Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa (0-7), and the Patriots go into Hard Rock Stadium as 1½-point underdogs.
There’s been a lot of post-opener noise about Maye having too much on his plate and not yet working in synch with new offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels. New England’s offense was remarkably feeble in Week 1 and a portion of Patriot Nation is wondering if Maye is The Guy, or just another Jones/Tony Eason failure waiting to happen.
Is The Drake feeling the heat?
“You can’t let last week dwell on this week,” Maye said in Foxborough Wednesday. “It was one game that we wished we could have had and feel like we could have had. … It’s my job to try to get us going, and try to start fast. … That’s kind of a theme for the team. Start faster.”
We are an impatient lot. Brady spoiled us, for sure. But after back-to-back 4-13 seasons, and zero playoff wins in six years, the pressure mounts. The maturation of Maye, the returns of Mike Vrabel and McDaniels, and $360 million spent on free agents was supposed to make the Patriots better this year.
Prepare for more overreaction postgame Sunday. We’re likely to come away believing that the Patriots are finally moving in the right direction … or relegate them back to the basement and wonder why we thought that The Drake and the Pats were going to be any different this year.
It’s a lot of pressure for a Week 2 game between two winless teams in September.
⋅ Quiz: 1. Name six NFL coaches to win AP Coach of the Year with more than one team; 2: Three-hundred-game winner Early Wynn won the Cy Young Award in 1959. Since Wynn retired in 1963, three MLB pitchers reached the 300-win plateau without winning a Cy Young Award. Name them (answers below).
⋅ Twenty-three-year-old southpaw Connelly Early made old-timers think of Red Sox pitchers from the 1960s when he took the mound in Sacramento Tuesday. His 11 strikeouts in five innings of shutout ball against the A’s had us thinking about Boston rookie lefthander Billy Rohr almost no-hitting the Yankees in his big league debut in 1967. I couldn’t help but think of lefty Arnold Earley, who won 10 games for awful Red Sox teams from 1960-65.
⋅ This will be Alex Bregman’s ninth consecutive October in the playoffs.
⋅ Pro Football Hall of Fame gossip: In case you’re wondering, Belichick is eligible for entry into the Hall next year. Canton should be a lock for Belichick, but the Hoodie might find it harder to get into the Patriots Hall of Fame. Belichick’s weekly blasts of all things Kraft probably put him in the penalty box recently vacated by Bill Parcells, who finally enters Kraft’s shrine Sept. 20, along with Julian Edelman. The Tuna should have been in the Patriots Hall a long time ago, but he lost a bunch of fan votes, and he didn’t get the nod from Kraft until this year. Meanwhile, Kraft remains frustrated that he can’t get into Canton while Jerry Jones has been walking around in a Hall of Fame yellow jacket since 2017.
⋅ Former Canadiens goalie Ken Dryden died of cancer Sept. 5 at the age of 78, and it bothered this correspondent that the sad news didn’t move the needle much here in the New England sports world. It’s certainly understandable, given that Dryden’s playing days were in the 1970s — a long time ago. It’s not your fault if you never heard of Dryden or if his is just a name your grandpa told you about while the Zamboni was cleaning the ice between periods of a 21st century Bruins game.
I am not a hockey guy, but I lived through the Bobby Orr, TV-38, UHF antenna, “Nutty”/Gallery God days when the Big Bad Bruins were kings of New England. No Boston sports rival — not Magic Johnson, Derek Jeter, nor Eli Manning — ever tortured New England sports fans more than 23-year-old Dryden in the spring of 1971.
The Bruins had won the Stanley Cup in 1970 (for the first time since 1941), and were going to win it again in ’72, but the ’71 team was indomitable. Those Bruins averaged 5.12 goals per game and had 10 players with 20 or more goals. Four Bruins were on the six-man All-NHL team and all scored more than 100 points. Boston players copped the Ross, Hart, and Norris Trophies, and the Bruins scored 108 more goals than the next-best team.
Unfortunately, the Bruins’ scorched-earth campaign came to an abrupt halt in the first round of the playoffs, when the Habs rolled out Dryden: a kid goalie from Cornell who’d played only six NHL games.
Rookie Canadiens goalie Ken Dryden stoned the Bruins in the 1971 playofs.
Rookie Canadiens goalie Ken Dryden stoned the Bruins in the 1971 playofs.?
Former Globe columnist Leigh Montville recalled, “The night before Game 1, I needed a different story for the PM edition. Panicked, deadline closing, I called the Newton Marriott and asked for Ken Dryden. They put me through and he answered.”
“I don’t know who’s going to play in the goal,” Dryden told Montville that night. “Nobody knows. The coach will tell us sometime before the game — maybe at dinner, maybe later.“
With Dryden standing on his head, the Canadiens beat the stunned Bruins in seven games, winning the finale at the Garden, 4-2. The Canadiens went on to win the Cup and Dryden became the only player in history to be named best player in the playoffs one year before he was NHL Rookie of the Year.
Phil Esposito called Dryden “a [expletive] thieving giraffe.”
Smart and dignified, Dryden was hockey’s Bill Bradley. He played for Team Canada in the Summit Series in 1972, won the Cup six times in eight NHL seasons, then went on to become a lawyer, author, sportscaster, member of Canada’s Parliament, and a cabinet minister. He also was president of the Maple Leafs for a spell.
“His book ‘The Game’ is, to my thinking, the best memoir written by an athlete,” says the Sports Museum’s Richard Johnson, author of 25 books.
Dryden was a Bruins draftee in 1964 (14th overall) and played many ECAC games for Cornell at the Old Garden. His last appearance on Causeway was Dec. 1 last year, when he participated in a ceremonial faceoff with Johnny Bucyk marking the Bruins’ centennial game vs. the Canadiens. Dryden’s son, Mike, played baseball at Harvard.
Ken Dryden's final appearance on Causeway Street came last December.
Ken Dryden's final appearance on Causeway Street came last December.Matthew J. Lee/Globe Staff
Ken Dryden came to love all things Boston and Cambridge. In an email to former Harvard goalie Joe Bertagna a couple of years back, Dryden wrote, “My favourite place is still Bartley’s.”
⋅ When does somebody stand up and say “no more!” regarding the University of Massachusetts Division 1 football program? None of this is the fault of the players, but it’s a waste of taxpayer money and an embarrassment to watch the Minutemen’s annual autumnal failures. Last Saturday, UMass lost to Bryant, a subdivision football school that finished 2-10 last season. It was Bryant’s first victory over an FBS opponent. USA Today reported that UMass paid Bryant $325,000. Since joining the FBS, UMass is 26-124.
⋅ Baseball on Sept. 5 lost the inimitable Davey Johnson at the age of 82. Johnson played in four World Series with the Orioles (winning two) from 1966-71, and managed the Mets when they came out of the grave and defeated the Red Sox in Games 6 and 7 of the 1986 World Series. Johnson played alongside Hall of Famers Luis Aparicio and Brooks Robinson in Oriole infields that ranked with the best in baseball history (Boog Powell at first, Mark Belanger at shortstop after Aparicio). Johnson hit 43 homers while playing second base for the Braves in 1973. He got the last hit off Sandy Koufax (1966 Series), made the last out of the 1969 Miracle Mets’ World Series win over the Orioles, and was playing second base in Atlanta when Hank Aaron clubbed career home run No. 715.
Manager Davey Johnson and the Mets defeated the Red Sox in the 1986 World Series.
Manager Davey Johnson and the Mets defeated the Red Sox in the 1986 World Series.Ray Stubblebine/Associated Press
⋅ Anyone remember when Carl Yastrzemski (.301) won the batting title as the American League’s only .300 hitter in 1968? The National League might not have a single .300 hitter at the end of this season. Philadelphia’s Trea Turner is locked in at .305 and won’t play for a while because of a hamstring injury. Turner may wind up being the Yaz of 2025.
⋅ The playoff-bound (?) Mariners are the only big league team that’s never appeared in a World Series.
⋅ The Giants and Jets are both 0-1. Ho-hum. The last time they both started 1-0 was in 2009.
⋅ Pass Go! and collect $200 if you know that only seven players in NBA history averaged more than Dave Cowens’s 13.6 rebounds per game.
⋅ The New York Times/The Athletic recently ranked 16 NHL noncontenders, headlined, “Which Rebuilding NHL Teams Are Closest to Being Contenders,” and the Bruins came in dead last.
⋅ Angel Reese defenders hold that the WNBA star gets picked on (recently suspended by her own team for ripping the team) because she’s a female athlete. Baloney. Reese gets in hot water because she’s an insufferable attention-seeker who demonstrates little understanding for anyone other than herself.
Is WNBA star Angel Reese her own worst enemy?
Is WNBA star Angel Reese her own worst enemy?Steve Marcus/Associated Press
⋅ The ever-better Sports Museum has a ton of new exhibits at the Garden, including a Pete Frates display on Level 6. The exhibit chronicles Frates’s athletic exploits at St. John’s Prep and Boston College, and his ALS diagnosis, which led to a worldwide fund-raising phenomenon (the Ice Bucket Challenge) that has generated more than $1 billion for ALS research since 2014.
⋅ Boston Latin School’s class of 1971 is planning an event at the school on Friday, Oct. 3, at 4 p.m., to honor a classmate and BLS Athletic Hall of Famer, the late Al Lussier, who played on the 1970 undefeated football team. After Boston Latin, Lussier played at Columbia before enlisting in the US Marines, dying in the act of saving a fellow Marine and posthumously being awarded the Marine Corps Medal for heroism. The event is open to the public and will be followed at 7 p.m. by Newton South vs. Boston Latin football at Roberto Clemente Park. Boston Latin players will wear #71 decals, honoring Lussier.
⋅ Quiz answers: 1. George Allen (Rams, Redskins), Bruce Arians (Colts, Cardinals), Chuck Knox (Rams, Bills, Seahawks), Bill Parcells (Giants, Patriots), Dan Reeves (Giants, Falcons), Don Shula (Colts, Dolphins); 2. Nolan Ryan, Don Sutton, Phil Niekro.
Dan Shaughnessy is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at daniel.shaughnessy@globe.com. Follow him @dan_shaughnessy.