Is It Time For the New England Patriots to be Concerned About Drake Maye?

The start of the 2026 regular season has not been kind to Drake Maye.

One year removed from engineering an MVP-caliber performance, the 24-year-old leads the NFL with seven turnovers and has registered just one touchdown through three games this fall. His six interceptions in the New England Patriots’ first three games of 2026 tied Drew Bledsoe’s 1994 franchise mark, but rather than a massive reversal of fortune, his continued struggles are a reflection of the player he became during New England’s 2025 playoff run to Super Bowl LX.

Maye’s most recent outing against the Jacksonville Jaguars was his worst in three seasons: he concluded the afternoon 14-of-25 passing (56.0% completion percentage) with 199 yards, no touchdowns, two interceptions, one fumble lost, a 48.6 passer rating, and an EPA-per-dropback of -0.53 (per SūmerSports) before being pulled with eight minutes remaining in the blowout 35-6 loss. 

His continued transgressions have left many wondering what happened to the confident, decisive version of Maye that took the league by storm in 2025, and if he’ll ever be able to reach those same peaks again. Today, we analyze Maye’s recent hindrances, and look to conclude if they’ll simply become a blip on the radar, or are emblematic of the player he’ll become moving forward.

Here’s how we got here with Drake Maye, and a forecasted future outlook:

Drake Maye experienced a breakout season in 2025 while working with head coach Mike Vrabel and offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels for the first time. In Maye’s first full season as a starter, the trio enjoyed great team success — Maye was the catalyst of the Patriots’ offense for the vast majority of the year, and finished just three votes shy of being named the NFL’s MVP at just 23-years-old.

The traditional statistics were — in short — impressive. He finished the regular season with 4,394 yards, 31 touchdowns, and just eight interceptions passing, and added 450 yards and four touchdowns rushing. Maye led the league in several statistical categories, including yards per attempt (8.9), passer rating (113.5), QBR (77.1), EPA per play (+0.27), and completion percentage over expectation (+9.1%). His NFL-best 72.0% completion percentage broke Tom Brady’s 2011 franchise record and ranks as the sixth-highest mark in NFL history.

Here’s a closer look at how he performed versus coverage last fall:

Even through his hyper-efficient excellence, there were subtle signs of cracks in the armor. In the 2025 regular season, Maye ranked 30th in the NFL in EPA/dropback against Cover 6 at +0.029 — a stark contrast from his league-leading EPA/dropback of +0.313 against all other defensive coverage shells (per SūmerSports). That would return in droves when the postseason got underway.

When the 2025 postseason arrived, Maye’s statistical outputs dropped-off precipitously. He played against some of the best defenses the league had to offer in four consecutive games, marking one of the most difficult runs by any quarterback in NFL history, and it showed — but was masked by several historical feats en route to Super Bowl LX.

Maye became the first quarterback in NFL history to defeat three of the NFL’s top-five defenses in the same playoff run, and was just the third 23-year-old quarterback in NFL history to start a Super Bowl (Dan Marino, 1985 and Ben Roethlisberger, 2006). Maye’s 17 wins in 2025 were the most by a quarterback in their first or second seasons in NFL history. Including his postseason statistics, Maye accounted for 5,850 total yards (73.6% of New England’s 7,949 total yards gained in 2025) of offense for the Patriots (5,222 yards passing and 628 yards rushing) and scored 42 total touchdowns.

Not only was Maye facing his best competition, he was responsible for wins against teams that seemed to lean into vulnerablility during the regular season: Cover 6. This is how the coverage splits looked against Maye through the playoffs:

Maye still saw a large share of single-high safety coverages (Cover 3, Cover 1), and made the most of those opportunities when they presented themselves. The Cover 6 rate he saw began to see a substantial increase through the AFC Championship Game, as the Houston Texans (six plays), Denver Broncos (five plays), and Los Angeles Chargers (five plays) all began to work the coverage into their defensive package.

In Super Bowl LX, the Seattle Seahawks looked to exploit that weakness even further.

When building a gameplan to neutralize Maye, Seattle used their secondary “change-up” coverage as a primary source of confusion for the young gunslinger. They held Maye to 27-of-43 passing with 295 yards, two touchdowns, two interceptions, one fumble lost, and six sacks. His EPA/play fell to -0.31 against a defense that ran Cover 6 substantially more than any other coverage. 

The Seahawks came out in Week 1 of the 2026 regular season with a similar gameplan, and a disastrous fourth quarter ended with similar results. Maye finished the game 23-of-33 passing with 178 yards, one touchdown, three interceptions, and three sacks, with an EPA/play of -0.14. Here’s how that looked against Seattle by coverage faced:

In both matchups, Seattle employed a high-percentage of Cover 6, with Cover 3 as their secondary shell post-snap. While his performance in September was a clear improvement over his woes in February, Maye was still a long ways away from the heights he achieved earlier last year. 

The postseason run and matchups against the Seahawks in Super Bowl LX and the 2026 regular season-opener put his deficiencies on display for the rest of the league. Now, that’s become a blueprint for others to model gameplans after.

From costly turnovers to a continued lack of confidence in his reads, holding onto the ball in situations where he would have previously trusted in his arm talent and forcing throws into non-existent windows, Maye’s greatest strength has become his most challenging adversary: decision-making. 

That’s led to sacks, turnovers, and a timid-looking quarterback in the pocket — one year removed from an MVP-caliber showing. Now three games into the 2026 regular season, those issues are emanating into each dropback, regardless of coverage faced. Here’s how Maye has performed versus coverage-type through the early portion of the fall:

Entering Week 3, Jacksonville was set to challenge Maye’s weaknesses against Cover 6 more than most. Since the start of the 2025 regular season, the Jaguars have established a clear preference in their defensive coverage shells under defensive coordinator Anthony Campanile — and it attacked many of the flaws Maye has displayed as of late. 

Much like the Seahawks, Jacksonville had employed Cover 3 (314 snaps) as a base coverage, with Cover 6 (173 snaps) most frequently used as a change-up. In the same time frame, only Seattle (209 snaps) ran Cover 6 at a higher frequency around the NFL. 

But on Sunday, that wasn’t what rattled Maye against the Jaguars. In fact, his performance against Cover 6 was actually a bright spot in an otherwise grim showing. The bait-and-switch of Cover 3 and Cover 6 has been an enigma that Maye’s still yet to solve, but his most efficient outing against those coverages pointed to greater concerns.

Here’s how Maye performed versus coverage-type in Jacksonville:

A tendency-breaking schematic structure from the Jaguars saw them play an extremely high percentage of Cover 1, with less snaps in Cover 6 and Cover 3 as a result. Likely hyper-fixated on working through his difficulties against those zone coverages, Maye performed well when he saw those looks, but a new issue was at the forefront: man coverage.

Since the start of the 2026 regular season, Maye has completed just 5-of-15 passing attempts (33.3% completion percentage) for 87 yards against Cover 1, and his -0.314 EPA-per-dropback ranks 32nd among NFL quarterbacks this fall. 

A new deficiency in his game, Maye excelled against man-to-man looks during the 2025 regular season. Against Cover 1, he completed 72-of-101 attempts (71.3% completion percentage) with 1,072 passing yards, 11 touchdowns, three interceptions, and a league-best EPA-per-dropback of +0.625, per SūmerSports.

With recurring struggles against certain zones and new mishaps against man, the more unambiguous takeaway is that Maye’s early-season slump hasn’t been defined by coverage or opposing personnel. Rather, his indeterminate nature from the pocket has led to self-inflicted wounds. Those have compounded after weeks of turbulence, forcing him into more fatal errors as he presses to break the cycle with highlight plays that haven’t been available.

Maye has attempted to walk a fine line between maintaining the aggressiveness that resulted in explosive plays last fall (15.9% explosive play rate, second in NFL) and the patience to avoid back-breaking giveaways that have persisted since the onset of the 2025 postseason (15 from the Wild Card Round-Week 3 of 2026). 

All the while, he’s navigated the early part of 2026 with a relatively unfamiliar cast of key contributors — and without his top talent along the boundary. 

In 2025, it was Stefon Diggs that Maye turned to underneath in must-have situations, and Diggs delivered with 85 receptions on 102 targets (83.3% catch rate, first in the NFL), 1,013 receiving yards (11.9 yards per reception), and four touchdowns. On the outside, it was Kayshon Boutte, who hauled in 33 receptions on 46 targets with 551 receiving yards (16.7 yards per catch, fourth in the NFL), and six touchdowns in 14 games.

Diggs has been replaced in the slot by DeMario Douglas, whom the Patriots actively attempted to keep off the field in past situations where great nuance and awareness was required. Through three games, Douglas has recorded seven catches on 14 targets and 67 receiving yards, but has just one catch in each of the last two games. Free agent addition Romeo Doubs has taken over as the offense’s top “Z” receiver, and has registered six catches on 11 targets (two drops) and 145 yards — with 96 coming in Week 2 alone.

Maye’s proven rapport with those who have departed won’t help him get back on-track in 2026, but does begin to provide an explanation to the lack of chemistry that has been developed with the current group of receivers on the field. 

Entering the fall, that go-to option would have been A.J. Brown, who was placed on injured reserve with a high ankle sprain suffered in the season-opener at Seattle. In the first half of the NFL’s kickoff game, Brown proved to be a trusted target on underneath throws with three receptions and 26 yards. 

Mack Hollins has stepped into the “X” role in Brown’s stead and has done a commendable job. Hollins’ currently leads all New England receivers with 12 receptions, 16 targets, and 156 receiving yards, showcasing the versatility and dependability that made him an integral part of the team’s 2025 success. Hollins’ 46 catches and 65 targets ranked as the second-highest marks for Patriots’ wide receivers during last year’s regular season, trailing only Diggs.

Hollins will continue to be an important complementary piece throughout the fall, but doesn’t have near the track record, athletic profile, nor influence on defensive coverage that Brown does. Already a proven commodity on deep passes, Brown’s inclusion over the last two weeks would have also yielded greater results against man coverage for his quarterback. From 2022-2025, Brown led the NFL in receptions (129) and receiving yards (1,977) when facing man coverage, and ranked fourth in the league in receiving touchdowns (22), per Next Gen Stats.

It’s become evident that the Patriots — and Maye — placed all their chips in Brown’s basket entering the season. He’ll need to miss at least two more games before he’s eligible to return, although no exact timetable has been provided for when he’ll be back out on the field. When he does, it will go a long way toward solidifying the roles those other players have behind him in the room, and rectifying the issues that have plagued the corps with consistently beating coverage and finishing plays.

Brown’s re-introduction to the offense won’t fix the obvious wavering confidence Maye’s had in dissecting defenses this fall, but it will give him an outlet to target when indecision strikes. That’s been absent from the Patriots’ 2026 squad, and has had lasting ramifications.

New England’s receivers have been pressure-tested for greater contributions without Brown on the field, and have thus far failed. Maye has undergone those same trials, and the consequences have been much graver on his end. 

Maye may be in a rut, but context matters in the discussion surrounding his struggles. A 24-year-old quarterback in his second full season as a starter has an extensive book out for other teams to evaluate. 21 games under McDaniels in 2025 and three more in 2026 have bred great success, and revealed the few warts of a talented player growing into superstardom in the most competitive league on the planet. 

Maye’s next evolution will be focused on adapting and overcoming the ever-changing environment around him. Until he masters that, the ordeal will endure — but each passing week provides new opportunity to put those past demons to bed and generate positive momentum that can last long after these temporary hardships are conquered. With more time on task between Maye and his new targets, confidence will be renewed and the player who elevates those around him will begin to shine through once more.

How do you think Maye will respond to his continued struggles? When will he begin to turn the corner once more? Drop your thoughts in the comments below and join the conversation on Patriots Roundtable.

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