Drake Maye, Patriots Offense Face Harsh Reality Check at OTAs

Unfortunately, even at this early stage, things are not looking promising. The offense already seems to be struggling. Despite adding several new pieces, including offensive linemen and playmakers like Stefon Diggs, TreVeyon Henderson, Kyle Williams, and Mack Hollins, the unit has looked shaky. 

Understandably, it will take time for a group with so many new faces and a new offensive coordinator to click, but you would still hope to see a little more promise at this stage.

The defense is also new and is working through its issues, but the offense appears less cohesive, which is concerning, especially since improving that side of the ball was the primary focus of the offseason.

To make matters worse, Chad Graff of The Athletic reported that in one of the early sessions, rookie quarterback Drake Maye threw four interceptions in his first six plays. In his latest update, he noted the offense continued to be inconsistent, with several inaccurate passes from Maye hitting the turf.

It is early, but the signs are hard to ignore.

As mentioned in the tweet, in the big picture, this isn’t a significant issue, but it does raise some valid concerns. 

These kinds of mistakes can’t become a pattern. It’s normal for a second-year quarterback and a bunch of new faces to go through some growing pains, but the errors we’re seeing now need to start getting cleaned up as the offseason rolls on. 

If these same issues are still happening in July and August, that’s when it becomes a real problem. They’ve got to recognize what’s going wrong now and get out in front of it.

There have been some encouraging clips and highlights from Patriots OTAs, showing the offense making a few nice plays. That said, the key is consistency and minimizing mistakes. 

You don’t win in the NFL with a couple of flashy plays; you’ve got to be able to string together full 70- or 80-yard drives. That’s what separates solid offenses from the rest once the games start to count.

There’s a lot of pressure on Drake Maye and the Patriots offense to take a step forward this year, so any report like this is going to get extra attention. The good news is, there’s still plenty of time to improve. But they’ve got to make progress every day, every practice. So far, most reports coming out have made it clear that the offense still has a lot of work to do.

Hopefully, by the time training camp kicks off in July, the conversation will shift to how sharp the offense looks and how excited people are to see Maye take the reins this season. 

Until then, it’s all about steady improvement. It’s going to be a long road for Maye and the offense, but if they stay focused and put in the work, there’s real potential for this team to surprise a lot of people.