Drake Maye’s Leadership Is Showing

By Steve Atkinson 

Drake Maye is beginning to demonstrate his leadership qualities. Each week, he is proving his ability to uplift his teammates and speak up when he notices something amiss. Recently, he addressed the offense because he was dissatisfied with how practice was going. This improvement was evident on Sunday during the hard-fought victory against the Bears. In contrast, Caleb Williams lacks the leadership qualities of Drake Maye and Jayden Daniels. Williams is primarily focused on himself, a fact that was apparent last year at USC.

Maye is taking steps to be a good leader

Drake started his press conference on Sunday after the game by asking the media to put their phones down and applaud the defense. It’s rare to see quarterbacks show that kind of leadership. We also witnessed Mac Jones displaying leadership during his rookie year before Belichick hindered his progress. Now, after Sunday’s loss to Minnesota, it seems Mac’s potential has faded. Thank you, Bill and Matt Patricia. Unlike Belichick, Mayo and his team won’t treat Drake the same way in his second year. Drake will always have an offensive coordinator to guide him.

think just little things. I think just taking that next step is me being the quarterback in the offensive meeting room. Little things that are adding up and hurting us in practice that are leading to game day. I think last week I mentioned we had second and third down and a two-minute drill that we ran and couldn’t pick up one yard. Little things like that, just little detail unfocused, and I think sometimes just getting into practice mode where you’re just running plays and not really tuned in and trying to execute specific plays. You’re trying to just get in a groove like hey, we’re just running plays out here just for nothing, and just really trying to challenge those guys and challenge myself to take each play and know that when the game comes, this play is called, it matters. There’s so many times throughout the game you see how much that play can impact the turnout of the game, so I was just trying to get through to them and probably fumbled some words trying to do it, but I think those guys respected it.”

Drake Maye makes plays with his feet

Drake Maye showed his ability to make plays with his feet and consistently tried to push the ball downfield. While he did have one bad interception on Sunday, overall, he performed well. The defense was impressive and sacked Williams multiple times.

As for the implications of the win, I believe it says more about New England than Chicago. New England has a quarterback who demonstrates real leadership, while Chicago lacks that quality. Unfortunately, it looks like another first-round quarterback may end up being a bust.

When a quarterback provides that level of leadership, it positively impacts the entire team. They can build on this win, even considering their past losses. The defense has improved, but in the second half, it seemed like the Bears were not fully engaged.

Drake Maye and the Patriots can hopefully use this victory as momentum heading into a challenging matchup against the Rams.