Albert Breer: “It Was Never About Year 1 With Drake Maye”
On Friday’s edition of Toucher and Hardy, Albert Breer of Sports Illustrated and the MMQB, joined the show and explained that it shouldn’t be about the team’s success in year 1 when it comes to Drake Maye.
What Would be a Successful Season for Drake Maye…
Fred Toucher: Bert, what, is the word on the draft with the Patriots now that you’ve had a week to sit down and, kind of talk to people, what are people saying?
Albert Breer: I think that there’s no question that this is going to be judged on what happens with Drake Maye, one way or the other, and that goes for all the teams that took quarterbacks. I think the biggest question I have is now that we’re through the draft, have they done enough to support their young quarterback? I’ve been asked a lot over the last few days, what would me what would be a successful season for Drake Maye as a rookie. I actually think it’s going to be stuff you probably won’t be able to see. You know, it’s going to be what’s happening in practice. It’s going to be rebuilding his lower half. Brian Hoyer showed us this great video. We did TV with him last week, and he shares this great video of Josh Allen at Wyoming and what he looked like throwing the ball in a practice at Wyoming. Then what it looked like a couple of years later in Buffalo. They had completely rebuilt him, and part of the reason they were able to do that is because they weren’t a bad team when they drafted him. They’d made the playoffs the year before, and so much of, you know, being able to make a sustainable change to what a quarterback is fundamentally, is to keep them out of third-and-long is to keep them from playing. I’ve used the Zach Wilson example a lot, Fred, you know, he turned into after his first year in the pros, he was Chuck Knoblauch trying to make the throw from second. You know, it was just like they had thrown him out there, and he was running around like a chicken with his head cut off because the team was no good. Constantly in long yardage and constantly playing from behind. You have to keep him out of those situations. How do you effectively do that? You know, I think more poignantly now, do you have the team to do that? If you don’t, you can’t throw him out there.
Fred Toucher: All right. So was this the right team to draft Drake Maye? For instance there I heard Felger play a clip from Chris Simms. He was saying, I don’t know what his point was, but he’s like, if they don’t play Drake May ethis year, everyone’s going to say, well, then why did you take him third? But the thing was like, say you traded with the Giants and you didn’t take Drake Maye and then you just took positional players. Then you’d be drafting a quarterback next season and they’d be starting with the same offense that Drake did. Drake Maye would be playing if you sat him a year.
Albert Breer: There’s there’s a couple things. There’s a couple problems with that. Number one, the quarterbacks at that level almost never go to the right situations because by definition, the teams drafted to the top are bad teams. Minnesota is an exception. But I think if you gave any of the six quarterbacks who went into the first went in the first round truth serum and ask them where they were, where they want to play, they all would have said, Minnesota. The situation, there’s just so much better than the other ones. It’s not even close. If you look at the other five. Right? Right.
Fred Toucher: Well, you have the best receiver in the league.
Albert Breer: You have a really good number two receiver and a top tight end.
Fred Toucher: And you have a offensive guru as coach.
Albert Breer: Yeah. I mean like everything about it is really like right where you need it. You don’t take him number three overall for this year. You take him number three overall for the next 15 years. When you have the opportunity to do it, you almost have to. The reason is, realistically you might get and you might have, if you’re lucky, three drafts to find him.
Fred Toucher: Yep.
Albert Breer: You’re sitting there at number three overall, and the guy with the talent to get you into the add to that to that level is there. You can’t pass that up like and it’s just again, like would Bo Nix be more functional in year one? Well given what the Patriots have, yeah I think he probably would be the guy who started 61 games in college. He played for two different programs. He can run around a bunch and make stuff happen. So yeah, like Bo Nix would probably be more functional for you in year one. This was never about year one. This is about, if I’m the Patriots I’m doing whatever I can to get into the that club. We’ve talked about Kansas City, Cincinnati, Buffalo, the Chargers, the Ravens. They’re there because they have quarterbacks, and those quarterbacks are all in their mid 20s right. Houston I think is there now. So how do you get to that club? You have to have a guy who’s got the ceiling to get there. And I actually think like of the guys in this class, like Drake has the second highest ceiling behind Caleb Williams.
