FOXBORO — From a loaded quarterback draft class that has seen seven different players start games already this season, Drake Maye is eclipsing them all.
Quite frankly, it’s not even close eight games into Year 2 as the Patriots get prepared to face one of Maye’s peers, Michael Penix Jr., and the Falcons on Sunday.
Maye stacks up among the NFL’s best quarterbacks in all standard and advanced stats. He’s playing like an MVP candidate while the rest of the quarterbacks from the 2024 NFL Draft class, Caleb Williams (Bears), Jayden Daniels (Commanders), Penix, J.J. McCarthy (Vikings), Bo Nix (Broncos) and Spencer Rattler (Saints), are hovering around the middle of the league’s pack or worse.
Maye’s in a class of his own among second-year QBs.
He got to know the rest of the QBs from the 2024 draft well last spring and still tracks how they’re playing.
“I trained with Bo Nix for the draft. I stay in touch with him. He’s playing great,” Maye said Wednesday. “Jayden’s had some injuries, but he’s played well when he’s been in there. I think I knew them all pretty well. Got to know Mike throughout the draft process and being at the Manning Camp and all different things. So he spins the football, like the way he throws it. He’s a southpaw, but comes out his hand. I noticed that when I threw with him. Me and J.J. are cool. Don’t want to not name anybody. Spencer Rattler, Caleb. Me and Caleb go back to high school. So got to know him really well. They’re doing some things in Chicago.”
Maye ranks first in his draft class in yards, touchdowns, passer rating, yards per attempt, completion percentage, completion percentage over expected (CPOE), EPA (expected points added) per dropback, QBR, PFF grade, PFF passing grade, big-time throw rate, turnover-worthy play rate, and any other metric worth discussing.
QBR tells the story best. It’s a stat developed by ESPN “which values the quarterback on all play types on a 0-100 scale adjusted for the strength of opposing defenses faced.” So, yes, it accounts for the weak strength of schedule that Maye has faced through eight weeks on the way to a 6-2 record.
Maye ranks fourth in the NFL behind just Dak Prescott, Daniel Jones and Patrick Mahomes with a 76.3 QBR.
The next-best second-year quarterback, Nix, ranks 17th with a 58.7 QBR. Williams is 18th, Daniels 20th, Rattler 21st and Penix 22nd. McCarthy only started two games before suffering a high ankle sprain. His 21.5 QBR would rank last among starting quarterbacks.
Last year, it was Daniels who ranked among the NFL’s best, placing fourth in QBR, while Maye was 17th, Nix was 18th and Williams was 28th. Penix and Rattler didn’t qualify with enough snaps in the top 32.
But Maye has taken a significantly bigger second-year leap than the rest of his classmates, so much so that Falcons defensive coordinator Jeff Ullbrich compared him to Allen this week.
“He’s way better than I wanted him to be,” Ullbrich told reporters this week. “He feels a lot like Josh Allen. He’s a problem.”
It’s been a quicker ascension for Maye than anticipated. He ranks fourth among all NFL QBs in PFF passing grade, first in passer rating, first in CPOE and third in EPA per play.
Maye has shown elite accuracy to all depths of the field, but he’s been especially adept on deep balls, completing 18-of-23 attempts for 549 yards with six touchdowns and no interceptions. Maye’s 78.3 completion percentage on deep passes ranks first in the NFL. No other second-year QB has a completion percentage over 50% on deep balls.
“I think the guys that he’s been throwing to have helped him, and I think he stays patient,” head coach Mike Vrabel said. “I don’t think he panics and launches it or throws it seven yards out of bounds, but I think there’s been a lot of improvement from training camp and seeing some of those passes. I don’t think there were as many completed in the preseason as there were in the regular season. I’m glad we saved them for the regular season.”
Maye is the only NFL QB with a CPOE (the difference between a quarterback’s actual completion percentage and expected completion percentage, controlling for the level of difficulty of each pass) over 10%. Maye and Rattler are the only quarterbacks from the 2024 class with positive CPOEs. Daniels, Nix, Penix and Williams all have completed fewer passes than expected with negative CPOEs. Williams ranks last in the NFL at -7.1%, which is 17.9 points lower than Maye’s.
Maye has accounted for 75.3 expected points added this season. No other quarterback in his class has accounted for more than 16.1 EPA. Three of his peers, Penix, McCarthy and Rattler, have negative EPA this season.
The Falcons come into Week 9 with the NFL’s stingiest pass defense, allowing just 149.1 passing yards per game. Still, it would be a surprise if Penix can outduel him at Gillette Stadium.