In his last three games, Patriots quarterback Drake Maye has completed 57 of 73 passes for 765 yards, with eight touchdowns and one interception.
In his last three games, Patriots quarterback Drake Maye has completed 57 of 73 passes for 765 yards, with eight touchdowns and one interception.Matthew J. Lee/Globe Staff
Picked-up pieces while remembering days when Notre Dame at Boston College was a big deal around here . . .
⋅ Drake Maye for MVP?
Patriots fans certainly believe. They love the Drake. They were chanting “MVP!” late in the third quarter of last Sunday’s rout of the Browns at Gillette. Days later, oddsmakers listed Maye as the third-leading candidate for MVP, trailing only two-time winner Patrick Mahomes and last year’s winner, Josh Allen.
Count me as one who doesn’t think it’s going to happen. It’s fun, and a far cry from this time last year, when Maye had three starts under his belt for a rudderless, 2-6 team bound for 4-13, and a head coach firing. The Patriots have had only one NFL MVP in their history: Tom Brady, who won the award in 2007, ’10, and ’17. Boston Patriots Gino Cappelletti and Jim Nance were AFL MVPs in 1964 and ’66, respectively.
The NFL MVP tends to be a quarterback. Peyton Manning is the league’s MVP king with five trophies, followed by Aaron Rodgers (four), and Johnny Unitas, Brett Favre, Jim Brown, and Brady, who won three each. Vikings tackle Alan Page (1971) and Giants linebacker Lawrence Taylor (1986) are the only defensive players to cop the award since the Associated Press made it a regular thing in 1957.
Maye’s candidacy is no joke. The award tends to go to the best player on the best team — votes by 50 media folks are cast before the beginning of the playoffs — and at this hour Maye’s team is ahead of the Bills and Chiefs.
Maye has won five games in a row. In his last three games, he’s completed 57 of 73 passes for 765 yards, with eight touchdowns and one interception. He won three road games in a stretch of three weeks. He’s not even halfway through this season and he’s already had five games with more than 200 yards, two TD passes, and a 135 passer rating. Brady did that only four times in his 2007 MVP season.
The Globe’s intrepid Ben Volin, an MVP voter this year, did a deep dive on all-time-best passer ratings in Weeks 1-8, and Maye’s 2025 campaign ranks eighth, trailing only Brady’s ’07 season, Kurt Warner in 1999, Rodgers in 2011, Dan Marino in 1984, Russell Wilson in 2020, and Manning in 2013 and ’14. Yikes!
The Patriots should be feeling good about the 2024 draft. Résumés are far from complete, of course, but at this moment Maye is valedictorian of a quarterback class that included Caleb Williams, Jayden Daniels, Michael Penix Jr., J.J. McCarthy, Bo Nix, and Spencer Rattler. I’d like to put the truth serum into war room guys from the Bears (Williams), Commanders (Daniels), and Broncos (Nix), and see if any would rather have their guy than Maye. Maybe the Commanders? Daniels took them to the playoffs last year. Still, I bet they’d rather have Maye.
When Maye was asked about the “MVP” chants last Sunday, New England’s humble, fast-talkin’ QB said, “I didn’t hear it. . . . But the fans have been awesome all season. It’s been really cool to see the difference from last year to this year.”
Amen to that.
New England loves the Drake. Bet fans are chanting “MVP” again Sunday.
⋅ Quiz: Name six Red Sox pitchers since 1960 who led the American League in strikeouts at least one season; 2. Name the five Dodgers managers who immediately preceded Dave Roberts, none of whom made it to the World Series (answers below).
⋅ Patriots special teamer Brenden Schooler reminds me of Dodgers hot dog Kiké Hernández.
Brenden Schooler is the Patriots' special teams captain.
Brenden Schooler is the Patriots' special teams captain.Danielle Parhizkaran/Globe Staff
⋅ Robert Parish has a book coming out in March. “The Chief,” co-authored by Parish and Jake Uitti, is being published by Triumph Books and can be preordered now.
⋅ If you are a Dwight Evans fan, pay attention to news coming out of Cooperstown Monday. That’s when the eight-man ballot for the next Veterans Committee Hall of Fame vote will be announced. Evans has a good chance to be on the ballot with other players from 1980-2015, who were never elected to the Hall by baseball writers. However, it’s not an automatic that Evans will make this cut. Other players up for consideration include Curt Schilling, Don Mattingly, Orel Hershiser, Albert Belle, Keith Hernandez, Kenny Lofton, Lou Whitaker, Fernando Valenzuela, Dale Murphy, Carlos Delgado, Jeff Kent, Willie Randolph and Frank White. It’s also possible that steroid guys Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Mark McGwire, Rafael Palmeiro, and Sammy Sosa could be brought back for another vote. The eight-man ballot will advance to another vote by another committee at the Winter Meetings, and it’s expected that one or two will emerge as members of the 2026 Hall class.
Here’s hoping Evans makes the cut, but the competition is steep. Murphy, for instance, is a two-time MVP. Then there’s Mr. Mattingly. The Blue Jays’ 64-year-old, mild-mannered bench coach has been in a major league uniform as a player, manager, and coach for 36 seasons and was baseball’s best player in the mid-1980s. As Yankees first baseman in 1985, Mattingly hit .324 with 35 homers, 145 RBIs, 48 doubles, and a .939 OPS. Only 6 feet tall and 175 pounds, over 14 big league seasons he hit .307 with an .830 OPS and won nine Gold Gloves.
Will former Red Sox right fielder Dwight Evans move one step closer to the Hall of Fame on Monday?
Will former Red Sox right fielder Dwight Evans move one step closer to the Hall of Fame on Monday?George Rizer/Globe Staff
⋅ Speaking of Dewey, a recent column here waxing on the 1975 World Series inspired readers to share stories of what it was like for them in the fall of ’75. One favorite came from Rhode Island’s Ted Quigley, who remembered Carl Yastrzemski working out with the Northeastern track team in the winter of 1974-75, training for ABC’s cornball “The Superstars” competition, hosted by Keith Jackson. With help from NU coach Irwin Cohen, Yaz wound up winning a half-mile race, beating the likes of fellow baseball players Rollie Fingers and Steve Garvey, and boxer Jerry Quarry.
Here’s another from Rick Traub, a retired real estate executive who lives in Blue Hill, Maine: “In October of ’75, I was a sophomore at Tufts when the Cincinnati Reds came to campus to work out during all those World Series rainouts. Students were invited to hang out at the workout at Cousins Gym. I think Sparky [Anderson, the Reds manager] was friends with our athletic director. The players were spread out on the basketball court. I don’t recall any working out going on. Maybe Sparky just wanted to keep them out of the Combat Zone. We had free reign to mingle on the gym floor and I remember talking smack with Pete Rose. He may or may not have been smoking a cigarette.”
⋅ Mike McMahon, sports editor of the Keene (N.H.) Sentinel, revisited Carlton Fisk’s Game 6 homer in a recent column (co-written with Abigail Ham) chronicling Charlestown, N.H.’s, belltower custodian, Dave Conant, on the night of Game 6. Conant was a volunteer groundskeeper for St. Luke’s Church on Charlestown’s Main Street. After Fisk clanged the game-winner off the left-field foul pole, Conant went to the steeple and rang the bells just before 1 a.m., waking up many of the town’s residents and bringing media attention to Charlestown in subsequent days. It was almost as big a story as presidential Election Day in Dixville Notch.
⋅ USA Today recently ranked the top 12 World Series champions of this century, and the 2018 Red Sox came up No. 1 The Curse-bustin’ 2004 Sox came in fourth, and the 2007 Sox were ranked ninth.
⋅ God bless the pitch clock. When the Dodgers and Red Sox played an 18-inning World Series game in 2018, the game lasted 7 hours and 20 minutes. This past week’s 18-inning Blue Jays-Dodgers marathon took “only” 6:39. If you stayed up for every pitch in ’18, you truly love the Red Sox. If you sat through it all this past week, you love baseball.
⋅ Call me an old-school dope (many have), but it’s hard for me to imagine guys who never played in the majors coaching big league hitters. This was rare in the old days. There were plenty of managers who never made it (Earl Weaver comes to mind) to the bigs, but almost all of the major league coaches were former big leaguers. No more. The Red Sox recently promoted John Soteropulos to assistant hitting coach. A dreaded Driveline guy, Soteropulos played big-time Division 1 college ball at Cal, and will work alongside hitting coach Pete Fatse and assistant Dillon Lawson. None of them played in the bigs.
⋅ New Orioles manager Craig Albernaz was an Eastern Athletic Conference All-Star while playing for Somerset Berkley in 2000. The Globe’s Division 1 Player of the Year that year was West Roxbury’s Manny Delcarmen, a 2007 Red Sox World Series winner.
⋅ Remember D’Brickashaw Ferguson, former offensive tackle for the Jets? After 10 NFL seasons, Ferguson retired in 2016, and today he is a nurse at Robert Wood Johnson Barnabas Health in New Jersey. Ferguson and former Titans fullback Patrick Hill (now a psychiatric nurse at UCLA Medical) were recently featured in a New York Times front page story.
Former Jets offensive tackle D’Brickashaw Ferguson's new uniform consists of hospital scrubs.
Former Jets offensive tackle D’Brickashaw Ferguson's new uniform consists of hospital scrubs.BRITTAINY NEWMAN/NYT
⋅ Here’s The Athletic’s Stewart Mandel after covering North Carolina’s 21-18 road loss to Cal: “I had never covered a game in which the coach’s girlfriend was on the sideline beforehand, wearing a snakeskin-print jacket and knee-high boots.”
⋅ Vanderbilt’s football team has cracked the AP’s top 10 for the first time since 1947. The 7-1 Commodores are at Texas Saturday.
⋅ Folks in Lee County, Fla., held a celebration of life ceremony on Oct. 18 at JetBlue Park in Fort Myers for former Red Sox All-Star Mike Greenwell. Greenwell, who died Oct. 9 after battling cancer, served as Lee County commissioner in his post-baseball years.
⋅ If you didn’t get enough of Alex Rodriguez and Derek Jeter (along with David Ortiz) on Fox’s World Series pre- and postgame shows, get ready for “Alex vs ARod,” a three-part HBO doc exploring Rodriguez’s career. The doc starts Thursday.
⋅ Harvard’s Varsity Club is launching the Chester “Chet” E. Stone III Fund, in honor of the late, legendary equipment room manager at Dillon Field House from 1972-2005.
⋅ The late Barry Lorge, a Washington Post sportswriter and sports editor of the San Diego Union, will be inducted into the West Boylston High Athletic Hall of Fame Nov. 29.
⋅ Quiz answers: 1. Jim Lonborg (1967), Roger Clemens (1988, ’91, ’96), Pedro Martinez (1999, 2000, ’02), Hideo Nomo (2001), Chris Sale (2017), Garrett Crochet (2025); 2. Don Mattingly (2011-15), Joe Torre (2008-10), Grady Little (2006-07), Jim Tracy (2001-05), Davey Johnson (1999-2000).
Dan Shaughnessy is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at daniel.shaughnessy@globe.com. Follow him @dan_shaughnessy.