Alex Van Pelt shares two important updates on Drake Maye’s development
On Wednesday New England Patriots offensive coordinator Alex Van Pelt spoke about two of the bigger questions surrounding the play and usage of rookie quarterback Drake Maye – turnovers and designed QB runs.
It’s been an impressive start for New England Patriots rookie quarterback Drake Maye this year, but as he enters the final stretch of his first season there are still questions for him and the team to answer. Two big ones that have come up relate to turnovers and designed quarterback runs.
For those who followed the pre-draft process, it shouldn’t be a surprise that ball security is an issue for Maye early in his career. His ability to make highlight plays more routinely than most does mean his play gets erratic at times.
In his six full starts this year (not including the Jets game he left early due to injury), Maye has turned the ball over 11 times – throwing seven interceptions and losing four fumbles. His 3.1 interception rate is seventh-highest among qualified quarterbacks, while his four lost fumbles are tied for the league lead at the position.
It’s something offensive coordinator Alex Van Pelt addressed leading up to last week’s game against the Dolphins. “Training him and and trying to continue his development, we want to take care of the football,” Van Pelt said last Thursday. “If we can get out of the season on the full year with under, say, ten interceptions – maybe two or three of those are tip balls that are just freaky ones – then we’d feel pretty good.”
Maye ended up turning the ball over twice in that game, with an interception and forced fumble in the second half. While both plays was the pass protection break down putting Maye in a bad spot he didn’t help his case – especially on the fumble.
WATCH: Felger & Mazz discuss Drake Maye’s turnover issues
“The fumble – just find a way to protect the football and go down, or find a way to get it out,” Maye said of the play after the game. “I think I maybe could have spun out of it – reversed out of it and escaped it…don’t want to swim move the guy with a football. That’s just bad.”
On Tuesday, in his first press conference since the game, Van Pelt addressed the turnover issues again – this time taking a stronger tone.
“The turnovers, they have to stop. I mean, there’s no excuses. Whether you’re a rookie, ten year player, vet, doesn’t matter. We can’t turn the ball over and expect to win games,” Van Pelt said. “So that’s definitely an area of emphasis for us. With Drake, he just continues to develop. You forget sometimes that he is a rookie. There’s some mistakes that he’ll make just from [lack of] experience…But he continues to develop and does a really nice job. We’ve just got to take care of the football.”
While Van Pelt didn’t give a number relating to overall turnovers (ex. fumbles), there is still that ten interception comment from last week to go off of. After his pick against Miami, Maye now has three left to stay at or below that number with five games to play. If he does limit the interceptions at that level it would be a very encouraging end to the season but would also take a significant shift – he’s thrown at least one interception in four games in a row, and five of his six full starts.,
The other big external question about Maye doesn’t relate so much to his play on the field as it does the team’s usage of him. Maye has proven to be a matchup problem as a runner – he ranks ninth among all quarterbacks with 286 rushing yards (at 8.7 yards per carry) this year despite having only played about half the season.
Despite that, all of his runs have come off of scrambles. The Patriots have yet to call a designed run for him this year. Shortly after Maye took over the starting job, Van Pelt had mentioned the team would be cautious in the number of hits the rookie was taking, cutting down or eliminating designed QB runs all together.
Now, it seems like that plan could be changing. Asked about it again on Tuesday Van Pelt began by saying that the main objective is still “to keep [Maye] healthy, let him play the rest of the season out,” but then added “Can he run the ball as a quarterback in designed runs? Absolutely. Will we use them? Yeah, absolutely. We had them in we had him in last week.”
The fact those plays were on the call sheet, even if we didn’t see them, is notable. Van Pelt went on to say they’ll be called situationally. “I’m not going to ask him to do it on 1st & 10 in the middle of a drive,” he explained. “But if there’s a situation that’s a high leverage situation where we could use his legs to our advantage and the offense’s advantage, we certainly will.”
“He does run enough,” Van Pelt concluded. “He’s taking the hits in the pocket as a passer. So just trying to keep him as healthy as possible. But again, when the time comes and if we need a play and we think that’s the best play to get him carrying the ball, then we’ll do that.”
Were there opportunities to call those plays last week? There’s certainly a few that could be argued. The Patriots missed three 3rd down conversions during the game of four yards to go or fewer. There was also a two-point conversion (that the team picked up with a trick play).
Looking ahead, the Colts have been average at defending quarterback runs – both designed and scrambles – this year. They’re allowing 4.5 yards per carry to quarterbacks, which ranks 15th in the league. They haven’t allowed more than 55 rushing yards to an opposing QB in a game this season (Justin Fields had 55 yards on 10 carries in Week 4).
