NFL Notes: Maye’s day yet to come

The media will get its third look at the 2024 Patriots Tuesday afternoon, and when it comes to the quarterbacks it will be interesting to see if the plan for practice will remain unchanged. During our first two glimpses, veteran Jacoby Brissett took the lead reps while Bailey Zappe and rookie third overall pick Drake Maye followed.

There was a slight alteration to the routine last week from our first look as Maye took full reps with a group of young players on a separate field during 7-on-7 work while Brissett and Zappe split time on the other side. Those plays were run after the full-team 11-on-11 reps that saw Maye limited to the final handful of snaps.

On one hand it’s perfectly understandable that Maye is being integrated slowly. As a 21-year-old rookie (he doesn’t turn 22 until August 30) he has a lot to learn, and Jerod Mayo and the coaching staff are likely trying to avoid overloading him with too much information to start. Brissett was brought in to be the veteran starter and mentor, so the fact that Maye is being integrated slowly makes sense.

However, there’s a difference between being content to work Maye in gradually and not providing him with enough reps to learn. A couple of spring OTAs ultimately won’t be the difference between success or failure for Maye – or any other NFL player for that matter – as he begins his pro career. And not rushing him into the starting lineup is also an acceptable course of action.

But limiting his practice reps seems counter-intuitive on the surface. Mayo spoke about a competition at quarterback shortly after Maye was selected, only now it’s more about earning opportunities to practice let alone play.

“He is taking advantage of the opportunities that he gets. My message is, it’s not how many opportunities, it’s what you do with the opportunities that you get,” Mayo said when asked if he was concerned that Maye wasn’t getting enough reps.

“Look, going back to the competition part of it, the better you do on a day-after-day basis, not just on the field but also in the classroom, the more reps you’ll get going forward.”

Again, a couple of extra looks against one particular coverage likely isn’t going to determine how Maye’s career will develop. It just seems to make more sense to allow an inexperienced quarterback more chances to see the various looks and learn what he can and can’t do in order to combat them.

Peyton Manning recently spoke about his experience as a rookie when he threw 28 interceptions (still a rookie record) and suffered through a miserable 3-13 season but found the experience was instrumental in his development.

“I think experience is still your best teacher,” Manning said at an awards ceremony last month. “I think any quarterback would tell you, you just learn more things than you do sitting on the sideline. Any quarterback will tell you that. I went 3-13 my rookie year and didn’t play very well. We went 13-3 the next year. There’s no way that would have happened had I not played and kind of gone through those struggles and thrown those interceptions and figured out ‘Hey, OK, I can’t do that anymore. Hey, these guys are faster.’ You just sort of file it all away. Eli [Manning] played, I think, six games his rookie year, and he said what he learned in the six that he played was night and day to the 10 that he sat.”

While Manning was talking specifically about playing in actual games, the same would hold true for a practice setting. Mayo talked about earning additional reps but there would seem to be more value in learning from mistakes as well.

It would be more than reasonable to expect those reps to spike as the offseason progresses, culminating with next week’s minicamp. One reason for that, other than the importance of preparing Maye, is the presence of Zappe. It was hard listening to the third-year quarterback following last week’s practice, as he sounded very much like a player who understood his future likely doesn’t include Foxborough.

When asked if he expected to be in the competition to become the starter, Zappe’s responses included phrases like “that’s what I’ve been told,” which came across in a manner in which he didn’t seem to fully believe. Mayo spoke earlier in the spring about not keeping all four quarterbacks (rookie Joe Milton was not dressed for last week’s practice) into training camp and it’s certainly plausible that Zappe feels he’s the most likely candidate to be let go.

It’s also possible that Mayo and Eliot Wolf view Zappe as an insurance policy against being forced to play Maye. If the idea is for Maye to sit at least to start the year, and something were to happen to Brissett early on, Zappe would theoretically be able to step in. If Zappe goes, he would take with him any lingering protection against playing Maye.

That shouldn’t be enough of a reason to continue giving Zappe valuable practice reps that should be going to Maye, however. We’ll see if anything changes in that regard in the coming days.