Watching Drake Maye on Sunday night, it was obvious that something wasn’t right with the second-year quarterback, and that was a topic of discussion locally on Monday.
Marc Bertrand of 98.5 The Sports Hub’s Zolak & Bertrand had NBC Sports Boston’s Phil Perry on the show Monday afternoon, and based on what he saw, both in the game and in the days leading up to it, Bertrand felt that something was definitely off when it came to Maye’s throwing motion.
“He is obviously hurt,” said Bertrand. “He is obviously not at full health, and it has impacted his ability to throw the football in a very significant way.”
Bertrand then highlighted something he mentioned to Perry on air last week based on footage from practice, with one part of it standing out to him.
“I said, look at the way he’s swinging the shoulder forward,” said Bertrand. “He’s trying to push that ball. Something’s wrong. I think it was Thursday night when we were on set.”
Perry then went on to point out that he felt the pressure and the inability to operate in a muddy pocket was more of the issue witht he second-year QB than his shoulder.
“I don’t start there, though,” said Perry. “I start with the protection and the uneasiness in the pocket, and the inability to play in a muddy pocket, and the inability to really read out what the defense is doing. The reason he was pressured on more than half of his dropbacks, which is a mind-boggling number, is not just because the offensive line was getting its lunch handed to it – that was the primary reason, don’t get me wrong – but there are a number of different plays where he had initially pretty good pockets, and he got to the top of his drop, and he held onto the ball because either nobody was open or he wasn’t sure what he was looking at.”
Still, Bertrand pointed out that, despite that, the inaccuracy was something that he felt was shocking.
“He’s never missed that many throws,” said Bertrand. “And when he was trying to throw the ball downfield, it was coming out at a much higher angle where he’s doing everything to try and throw the ball, and he couldn’t do it. It looked like punts.”
“He couldn’t throw the ball. He could not throw it like he normally does. And he was trying, but he couldn’t do it. He missed more throws in a game than ever before. It was so obvious to me out of the gate. I’m like, ‘He can’t throw. What the hell is going on? He cannot throw the ball.'”
At the end of the day, the biggest factor was that New England was outplayed up front, which definitely had a significant impact. Maye didn’t have much time to operate, and Josh McDaniels never really dialed anything up to try to deal with the pressure the Seahawks were able to bring for essentially the entire night.
Still, as Bertrand pointed out, the fact that Maye wasn’t himself certainly didn’t help, and it was one of the more disappointing aspects to an overall frustrating night.
“I mean, he fully participated in the game last night, but he clearly is not himself,” said Bertrand. “He’s not himself. He is not healthy because they let him get beat up this year. And for so much of the season, the magic of the Patriots was Drake Maye getting out of the pressure that his offensive line had allowed, getting out of it, running out of it, moving the pocket to get away from it, making big throws outside of the pocket to extend plays. That was so much of their success this year. And it was wonderful and magical, and we had a boatload of fun watching this team.”
“I’m just telling you, that’s no way to live. That’s not a way to sustain your success. That’s not a way to get back to one of these games the way they did it this year. And I think it showed up at the worst possible time. He got hurt at the end of the year. His shoulder was a problem. And last night, they really didn’t have any answers against an amazing defense.”
“That defense is unbelievable. They got their ass handed to them. They got beat by a much better team. The Seattle Seahawks were the right team to win the Super Bowl. They were. That felt justified last night that they ended up going home with the Lombardi Trophy. “
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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.
