This is a key week for the New England Patriots, who will hold three practice sessions during their mandatory minicamp over the next few days.
It’s already been a long stretch for rookie quarterback Drake Maye, who hit the ground running with the club as he began the process of improving his fundamentals, with his footwork being the biggest topic of conversation coming out of the draft.
Watching the initial footage of the rookie last month, he looked very methodical and deliberate with each throw, which is expected when a player is trying to move away from bad habits and things they did in college.
However, having put in the additional time and effort, it sounds like Maye is already looking like a player who is closer to where he needs to be as he continues his NFL journey, which is a positive sign at this point of the offseason.
“It’s noticeably different,” said NBC Sports Boston’s Tom Curran of Maye during an appearance on Jones & Mego with Arcand last Thursday. “You can see there’s less deliberateness. I didn’t see hitches. I saw a mechanicalness to him in the first couple of practices, and that’s something Alex Van Pelt said, ‘Yeah, it’s going to be mechanical until it’s muscle memory.’ I wouldn’t say that’s gone away because it seems like it’s a very involved, depending upon run/pass, where your feet are going to go, how the stride length is, how many you take, direction, all that. But it’s improved. So kudos to him for that.”
“The ball comes out more smoothly. I think the place that you’re going to see his brain pour out his ears will be in mini camp, in training camp, especially mini camp and training camp. Just not seeing what was about to happen before it happens. That’s something that didn’t happen with Mac Jones. He just saw it.”
Curran pointed out that patience is going to be something that needs to be taken into account with Maye, who will likely experience a bumpier ride than what we saw from Jones. That’s why he feels that if Maye goes out and throws multiple interceptions over a short span of reps in practice, people need to not assume the worst given that it’s just part of the process.
“[Those problems] happened a ton with guys like Jared Stidham, who was a pretty talented college quarterback, not a dummy,” said Curran. “But it just didn’t happen with Jones. I think people are going to get a lot of those messages from us at training camp and go, Wait a minute. He had four picks and seven throws? Yeah, that’s what happens.”
He also pointed out that the defense is clearly well ahead of where the offense is, which may require Jerod Mayo to request they tone it down a bit at times to let the offense work through things.
“You’re almost going to ask those guys to cut the crap and go half-speed,” said Curran. “If you guys have ever had the opportunity to coach or be coached and you had to tell one side of the ball, ‘Will you please let them complete the pass so we can finish the rep, please?'”
“And it should be difficult in red zone 11 on 11 in April. You’re not going to run the ball. There’s no threat of the run, but nobody was open. And [Christian] Barmore is just moving people around like shopping carts. And it’s like they’re not even getting the plays off. I mean, they’re getting them off, but it would have been sack after sack after sack if they were allowed to bring people down.”
The Patriots will hit the practice field at noon on Monday in a session that’s closed to the public but open to the local media.
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Ian Logue is a Seacoast native and owner and senior writer for PatsFans.com, an independent media site covering the New England Patriots and has been running this site in one form or another since 1997.
