Art Chansky’s Sports Notebook is presented by The Casual Pint. YOUR place for delicious pub food paired with local beer. Choose among 35 rotating taps and 200+ beers in the cooler.
The Patriots are making Drake Maye tougher. Good.
Some former Carolina football stars stood out the first week of NFL exhibition games. Free agent Sam Howell had a great debut for Minnesota, where he may have lucked himself into the starting quarterback position. Fellow free agent Power Echols made a couple of good plays for the Bears. Omarion Hampton gave Charger fans a glimpse of potential greatness. And Willie Lampkin began to show that a 5-11 offensive lineman is worth a shot in the NFL after going undrafted.
Of course, we are most interested in Drake Maye and how the glamour-puss No. 3 pick is doing in his second season at quarterback for the legendary New England Patriots, whose old coach is our new coach.
Maye played a little, hit 3 of 5 passes and scored a touchdown in the 48-18 slaughter of the Washington Commanders in a game where their star QB Jayden Daniels didn’t play. A big and anxious crowd in Foxboro cheered Drake but not his new coach.
Mike Vrabel, a former all-pro linebacker who caught a few TD passes from Tom Brady, is the new coach and his personality is just what the franchise needs to leave the past three years behind. Especially last season, with a rookie head coach, no offensive coordinator to speak of, a terrible supporting cast, and they still won a few thanks to rookie Maye.
Maye, as we all know, is kind of the football version of Roy Hobbs in The Natural with a limitless upside. He’s 6-5 like Brady, handsome, smart and has athletic and football genealogy. And he is anxious to get better.
That’s what Vrabel wants, and he knows he has to have a team ten times tougher than last season and a mentality that makes them smart. So Vrabel got right on the potential Pats heart and soul for a careless strip sack he fumbled away on one of his seven snaps.
Here’s the thing about Maye.
He hasn’t had it very hard as a football player, a prodigy as a young kid whose family upbringing helped him win almost everything through high school to last season’s useless exercise.
So while Howell was running up more than a hundred yards of total offense in the 20-10 win over Houston and could easily beat out anticipated starter and first round draft pick J.J. McCarthy from Michigan, Maye is flat out expected to lead the Patriots back to the playoffs.
Despite his incredible past, Maye has never tasted true adversity in football and has the cast to help him get tougher and better.
Besides Vrabel, Super Bowl champion offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels is back, and the wide receiver and running back rooms have more than warm bodies.
Drake may be the same size as TB12, but he has to prove he’s just as big in other ways and keep growing.
Featured image via Associated Press/Charles Krupa
Art Chansky is a veteran journalist who has written ten books, including best-sellers “Game Changers,” “Blue Bloods,” and “The Dean’s List.” He has contributed to WCHL for decades, having made his first appearance as a student in 1971. His “Sports Notebook” commentary airs daily on the 97.9 The Hill WCHL and his “Art’s Angle” opinion column runs weekly on Chapelboro.Chapelboro.com does not charge subscription fees, and you can directly support our efforts in local journalism here. Want more of what you see on Chapelboro? Let us bring free local news and community information to you by signing up for our newsletter.
