Patriots’ Drake Maye Believes He’s Already Improved Before First Start

The Patriots aren’t just calling on Drake Maye to make his first career start Sunday. They’re hoping he can help course-correct what has been an abhorrent offense to this point in the young season.

It’ll be a tall task, but New England clearly has a lot of trust in the 22-year-old.

“Drake gives us the best chance to win now and going forward,” Patriots head coach Jerod Mayo said Wednesday, per team-provided transcript. “He’s been getting better every single week.”

Is it fair to place such large expectations on Maye? No, but it’s too late now. The Patriots have cycled through offensive linemen week after week, the decision-making from the coaching staff has been suspect at best and the weapons have struggled to find consistency within the system. New England still made the choice to put all of that on a rookie’s shoulders and expect him to improve the unit.

Maye can at least say he’s already found ways to improve personally.

“The verbiage of calling the huddles. (We) just had our first walkthrough and felt pretty good with the verbiage there, and other than that, (I’m) just excited for these guys,” Maye said Wednesday, per team-provided transcript. “I think it’s an opportunity against a good football team to go out there and prove some people wrong.

“… I had five games of sitting on the sideline hearing the play calls, preparing for the game, preparing for a Thursday night game versus preparing for a Sunday afternoon game. I feel like we’ve balanced a lot of different things throughout the week, how to prepare, and just trying to tag along from Jacoby (Brissett), a veteran in this league who does a great job.”

The Patriots will be hoping to avoid disaster against the Houston Texans, but at least they can find comfort in knowing Maye feels confident in his ability to help the team take a step forward.