Perry: My guess is Drake Maye will be Week 1 starter
Zolak and Bertrand discuss with Phil Perry, who is filling in for Beetle, about the chances of Drake Maye impressing so much during the Patriots’ training camp that his play wins the locker room and forces the franchise to name him the starter earlier than most anticipated.
Perry: I think there is a chance, Zo, and it’s funny when you mention Jacoby Brissett on the move, isn’t it hard to get out of your head, I don’t know if you remember this, but it was the first throw of the game when the patriots were in Cleveland a few years ago he basically threw a punt to Kyle Duggar.
Zolak: Yeah, they duped him into picking that.
Perry: It was a great play by the defense and it was a tough look, but it was the first play of the game. We obviously knew Jacoby Brissett going into that one and that was one of those fake the stretch run, bootleg out, throw it down the field.
Zolak: Yeah, I didn’t like that.
Perry: He’s better than that, obviously, that’s not going to be the result of every time he tries to do that. But I think there is a chance, Zo — when you’re up there and you guys are up there watching him every single day — that Drake Maye ends up impressing you to the point where you start to say, ‘OK, why are we just assuming that the veteran is going to start Week 1 again here?’ And that’s my guess too. As we sit here today, my guess is he is the starter Week 1, and I think it almost has as much to do with Drake Maye’s readiness in a vacuum as it does with the offensive line’s readiness to protect whoever is back there. But at some point — I wrote about this in the mailbag yesterday too — if it’s obvious to 98.5 The Sports Hub, sitting up on the hill — or wherever you’re watching training camp this year — to reporters who will be in attendance like myself, to the other players and coaches on the team that are watching practice day after day after day, if it’s clear that one guy — the younger guy — is better than the veteran, it’s going to be really hard for them to just sit Drake Maye just because you’re looking at the offensive line and saying, ‘Well, they’re not ready.’ Well, the rest of the team is looking at it and saying, ‘Well, we’re trying to actually compete here, and I want to look good, and I want to contend to win games. You’re telling me that one guy is going to be our starter even though I can see at practice every day that the younger guy is the guy who can do things the older guy can’t?’ That’s when you might run into enough stress on the decision-makers in New England when you see the young quarterback get in earlier than much of us are anticipating.
McKone: Zo, you’ve been talking about that since the second they drafted Maye. You’re not going to be able to lie to them in terms of keeping Maye off the field.
Zolak: You can’t. I keep saying, Mac was the 15th player drafted, the fifth quarterback taken. Why didn’t you have this approach with him? ‘He’s still raw. He only played one year. You’ve got to be careful. We don’t want to get him in too early.’ You threw him right in there. Threw him right in there. But you had confidence in (Josh) McDaniels getting him ready. This might be more on coaching than the actual player because maybe you don’t trust your offense yet. I don’t know why you would. [Alex Van Pelt] has no experience calling plays. He has a little bit in Cleveland, but the point is, you know you’re not going to be a great team to begin with so why not learn on the fly? I said that you can never lie to a locker room. If you’re in there playing and you’re competing every day and you see this kid beating him at practice and then he doesn’t play in the game, you’re like, ‘Why am I sacrificing my head out there, my body? What are we doing? It’s not making our team better. The best guy should play. If he’s the best guy, you play him. I am so not for just resting to rest. Don’t come at me with the damn Green Bay situation or the situation with the Chiefs because it’s not applicable. It’s not the same. You had a 12-4 team and two quarterbacks. One was the freaking NFL MVP in Rogers, the No. 1 seed who got popped. Alex Smith was 12-4, and managed the game well, throwing the ball from 45 yards. They’re not applicable! The only one you can come at me with is Jon Kitna and Carson Palmer. That’s the only one on record, and I think you may have brought it up months ago with that. Other than that, you can’t compare it.
