Drake Maye and the New England Patriots’ offense are in need of a confidence-building performance, but that won’t come easy against the AFC East-rival Buffalo Bills. 

Maye is coming off of a stretch of three difficult games to start the 2026 regular season, including arguably his worst career outing at the Jacksonville Jaguars last weekend. Now, Buffalo is on deck — with a new-look defense under first-time coordinator Jim Leonhard who’s sure to throw curveballs at the third-year quarterback to test his meddle, just as he did in the AFC Championship Game as the Denver Broncos’ defensive pass-game coordinator. 

Here’s what Maye and the New England offense can expect to see from Leonhard and the Bills’ defense when they line-up across from each other at Highmark Stadium on Sunday:

Drake Maye’s early-2026 woes have been well-chronicled and dissected, but have taken a new form in recent weeks. 

Against Jacksonville, Maye seemed to solve the enigma of Cover 6 — which has become the most frequently called coverage against the 24-year-old since the start of last year’s postseason run — but began to falter against man-to-man looks. 

In Week 3, Maye completed 5-of-6 passing attempts with 68 yards and an EPA/play of +0.535 against Cover 6. When facing Cover 1, however, he finished just 2-of-9 with 10 yards and an EPA/play of -1.046. 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. 

Here’s a closer look at how Maye has performed against coverage-types to begin the 2026 regular season (per SūmerSports):

A new deficiency in his game, Maye excelled against man-to-man looks for New England during the 2025 regular season. Against Cover 1, he previously 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.

Prior to this weekend, Maye was largely still effective on the rare occasions when he saw Cover 2 and Cover 4, but the similar presentation of Cover 1 and Cover 3 (single-high safety, middle-field closed) led to more inconsistencies against man-to-man coverage. 

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.

Buffalo’s defense won’t make that any easier this weekend. 

Under first-year head coach Joe Brady, Jim Leonhard has taken the reins of the Bills' defense and implemented a far different scheme than was prevalent under Sean McDermott. 

With Leonhard at the helm, Buffalo has shifted to a base 3-4 defense and specialized with a four-man pass rush that has generated pressure at a high-rate without the need for additional bodies vacating zones in coverage. Here’s how they've attacked opposing offenses up front through the first three weeks of the regular season: 

The Bills have leaned slightly more on four-man rushes than the rest of the NFL (75% vs. 68% league-wide), and their standard rush is generating pressure at a notably higher clip than the league-average (41.9% vs. 37.0%). 

Buffalo’s base front is winning one-on-one matchups more often than a typical defense with the NFL’s highest stunt-rate. The Bills have run stunts on 53 of 124 dropback snaps over Weeks 1-3 of the 2026 regular season — a 42.7% stunt rate, well above the league-wide rate of 28.2% over the same window, and the highest mark in the NFL. When they do stunt, they generate pressure at a 50.9% clip.

As down-and-distance becomes more advantageous for the defense, Buffalo’s stunt-rate does as well. Leonhard’s unit stunts on just 20-36% of early-down snaps, but that jumps to 57-80% on 3rd & short and 3rd & medium/long. 

The Bills are using more exotic rush games when they need a stop, but that only applies to their four-man rush, as blitzing (5+ rushers) doesn't follow the same pattern. That peaks on 2nd & short (60%) rather than on third-down, where they lean more on stunts with a standard four-man rush than on sending extra numbers.

Leonhard pairs a primarily four-man pass rush with a high percentage of zone coverages in the secondary. Here’s how Buffalo has developed their back-end scheme through the first three weeks of the regular season:

Under Leonhard, the Bills have employed a Cover 3-heavy coverage shell on nearly half of all their dropback snaps, and has performed at a roughly break-even in efficiency on those plays. They’ve used Cover 4 as their change-up, but it’s been their most exploited zone shell in efficiency terms, allowing a positive EPA/play at a reasonable sample size (30 snaps). 

Those coverage tendencies model similarly to what Leonhard presented Maye with in the AFC Championship Game in January. Denver used Cover 3 most (12 dropbacks), with Cover 6 (six snaps), Cover 1 (four snaps), Cover 4 (three snaps), Cover 0 and Cover 2 Man (two snaps each) used as change-ups. With the Bills, those man-to-man looks haven’t yielded great results. 

In contrast to the Broncos, when Buffalo has shifted into man coverage, the results have been disastrous on paper — both showing strongly positive EPA/play allowed for opposing offenses. Notably, the Bills’ Cover 1 has surrendered two touchdowns on just nine snaps, and Cover 0 saw three completions on three attempts with three touchdowns — all in the low red zone. Cover 2 Man, while run sparingly, has been Buffalo's best shell by far, with just one completion allowed on five attempts and a strongly negative EPA/play — though on an extremely small sample size of five dropbacks.

Buffalo has disguised their coverages pre-snap with frequent post-snap safety rotations. Over Weeks 1-3 of the 2026 regular season, the Bills rotated their safeties after the snap on 42 of 124 dropbacks (33.9%) — a much higher disguise rate than what New England saw from Jacksonville last week, but overall ranks in the middle of the pack (15th in the NFL).

About two-thirds of Buffalo's dropback snaps were "what you see is what you get" (82 of 124), but on roughly a third of snaps, they disguised the safety picture pre-snap and switched post-snap. Bucking a league-wide trend of showing two-high shells pre-snap, most of the Bills’ rotations have shown middle-field closed coverages and opened up (24), rather than showing open and rotating to closed (18).

Buffalo's most common look is a true open shell — showing two-high before the snap and staying there (37.9% of dropbacks), and it's been solid for the defense at +0.101 EPA/play allowed. The true closed look (single-high pre- and post-snap) has been the Bills’ best-performing coverage combination, however, at -0.169 EPA/play allowed.

Buffalo also disguises frequently: showing closed pre-snap and rotating to open post-snap on 19.4% of dropbacks (also effective, at -0.083 EPA/play), and showing open pre-snap before rotating to closed after the snap on 14.5% of snaps. The latter has been the Bills’ soft spot, giving up +0.817 EPA/play — dramatically higher than any other combination.

Against Maye, Buffalo will likely stick with what’s worked for them post-snap — a combination of Cover 3 and Cover 4 — while increasing their already high usage of pre-snap safety rotations to slow Maye’s processing and make him second-guess his reads. On New England’s side, Maye will need to do a much better job deciphering coverages, and take advantage of the opportunities the Bills give him when running man-to-man. 

How do you think Maye will bounce back against the Bills this weekend? Drop your thoughts in the comments below and join the conversation on Patriots Roundtable.

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