Hurley: New England Patriots made right pick with Drake Maye
BOSTON -- The draft is the draft, and thus nobody ever knows anything. Early first-round draft picks from every year end up fizzling, while late-round picks and undrafted players often end up flourishing in the NFL.
So to sit here on draft night and say anything definitively about the outlook of any player's career would be foolhardy. It would be disingenuous. Specious. Silly.
Dumb.
But with the top of the first round in the rearview, we can comfortably say this: The Patriots made the right pick with Drake Maye at No. 3.
Yes, the future path of Maye could lead him on a Josh Allen path or a Jameis Winston path, and the yawning gap between those two potential outcomes is staggering. But the Patriots did a couple of things right when they made the decision -- weeks ago, apparently -- to roll with Maye.
For one, they didn't overthink it. There are very real reasons that Caleb Williams, Jayden Daniels and Maye have always been the top tier of QB prospects this year, while J.J. McCarthy, Michael Penix and Bo Nix were considered second-round quarterbacks when draft season began. In terms of measurables, Maye was part of a group of QBs that fit the mold of potential stars in the NFL. He's big, he's athletic, and though his numbers dipped last season after losing his top two receivers, he has production.
Like any draft pick, Maye is no guarantee. But he checks a number of boxes for quarterbacks who have the chance to become a star. Taking McCarthy in that spot would have represented a much riskier decision by Eliot Wolf, Jerod Mayo, Jonathan Kraft, Matt Groh, Alex Van Pelt, Ben McAdoo, and anyone else who had a voice in the Patriots' war room.
And while the Patriots didn't necessarily have a say in Williams and Daniels going off the board at one and two, they do benefit from drafting the youngest of the top three QB prospects in Maye. At 21 years old, Maye has just two seasons as a starter in college under his belt, and he's got room to grow.
Of course, the risk side of that equation is that he might not. Mayo mentioned a concern about Maye's floor when speaking to reporters last month, which was a straightforward acknowledgement that a best-case scenario doesn't often play out in the NFL. As he's done a few times now in his brief tenure as a head coach, Mayo walked those comments back a bit on Thursday night.
"I wouldn't say [the potential floor] scared us," Mayo said. "Everyone was focusing on the ceiling, and obviously Drake has a high ceiling. But the floor is -- if everything goes wrong, which we don't anticipate to happen -- what does that look like? We were very comfortable as we continued to go through the process. We watched years of this guy playing football and feel good about the pick."
Ultimately, if anyone from the Penix/McCarthy/Nix trio ends up being head and shoulders better than Maye, then it'll hover over the Patriots as a miss, one that could set the franchise back years.
Yet such a conclusion will be one made only in hindsight. In the moment, the Patriots may have followed the popular logic, and they may have gone with the formulaic, stock pick. But they also, quite simply, made the right pick.
