{"id":88451,"date":"2025-09-05T08:45:54","date_gmt":"2025-09-05T08:45:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sportnews.azontree.com\/?p=88451"},"modified":"2025-09-05T08:45:54","modified_gmt":"2025-09-05T08:45:54","slug":"patriots-given-sobering-message-about-36-6-million-sophomore-quarterback","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sportnews.azontree.com\/?p=88451","title":{"rendered":"Patriots Given Sobering Message About $36.6 Million Sophomore Quarterback"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"post-featured-container-id\">\n<div id=\"post-featured\">\n<figure><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/heavy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Drake-Maye-Ranking.jpg?quality=65&amp;strip=all&amp;w=780\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 820px) 95vw, 780px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/heavy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Drake-Maye-Ranking.jpg?quality=65&amp;strip=all&amp;w=780 780w, https:\/\/heavy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Drake-Maye-Ranking.jpg?quality=15&amp;strip=all&amp;w=1100 1100w, https:\/\/heavy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Drake-Maye-Ranking.jpg?quality=65&amp;strip=all&amp;w=1350 1350w\" alt=\"Patriots Given Sobering Message About $36.6 Million Sophomore Quarterback\" width=\"780\" height=\"439\" \/><\/figure>\n<div>\n<p>Getty<\/p>\n<p>Drake Maye got a surpassingly low ranking from the NFL Index.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>In 2024, the New England Patriots made then-21-year-old North Carolina quarterback Drake Maye the No. 3 overall draft pick, the highest pick since owner Robert Kraft bought the team 30 years earlier, in 1994.<\/p>\n<p>In fact, Maye was highest Patriots pick since 1993, when under previous owner James Orthwein, New England took Washington State QB Drew Bledsoe with the No. 1 overall pick.<\/p>\n<p>In his sophomore season, Bledsoe led the Patriots to their first playoff appearance in eight years. Two years later, he took the team to only the second Super Bowl in franchise history, though the Patriots lost that one to the Green Bay Packers, 35-21.<\/p>\n<p>Two more playoff appearances would follow before Bledsoe was seriously injured in the second game of the 2001 season and replaced \u2014 as it turned out, permanently \u2014 by the 199th draft pick from the previous year, Tom Brady.<\/p>\n<div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<h2>Patriots Try to Cool Expectations Placed on Maye<\/h2>\n<p>So, as the highest draft pick since Bledsoe, expectations for Maye are clearly running high.<\/p>\n<p>Before the season, Patriots senior personnel executive Alonzo Highsmith said that the organization was not burdening Maye with those high expectations.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t think anyone\u2019s expecting Drake Maye to put this franchise on his back,\u201d Highsmith said in June. \u201cEveryone\u2019s got to play a part, and even though he\u2019s a quarterback \u2014 the quarterback position is a high-profile position and it requires a lot of things \u2014 I think everybody\u2019s going to do their part to help Drake Maye.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But realistically, fans and even Maye himself will be looking to the QB in get second season of his four-year, $36.6 million rookie contract to lead the Patriots at least to a significant improvement over the 4-13 records the team has managed in the past two seasons.<\/p>\n<h2>Maye\u2019s Ranking Among NFL Quarterbacks a Letdown<\/h2>\n<p>That\u2019s why it had to be sobering to see the new, preseason Quarterback Index rankings released by the NFL on Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p><em>NFL.com<\/em> analyst Nick Shook divided the 32 projected NFL starting QBs into eight \u201ctiers,\u201d with the lowest-numbered tier \u2014 No. 1 \u2014 including the league\u2019s elite quarterbacks, and quality decreasing as the numbers go up.<\/p>\n<p>Maye ranks in the Tier No. 5, with an overall ranking of 23rd in the NFL.<\/p>\n<p>But Shook took an apologetic tone in explaining Maye\u2019s modest rating.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMany pundits might say Drake Maye is ranked too low here, and I wouldn\u2019t entirely disagree,\u201d he wrote. \u201cWe know he has the tools. I\u2019d rather begin him here for the season, though, and let him climb instead of inflating his standing before we see how he actually benefits from an upgraded surrounding cast \u2014and how he meshes with (new offensive coordinator) Josh McDaniels. If all goes well, Maye will rise up these rankings.\u201d<\/p>\n<div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<h2>NFL Index in Line With Previous Ranking<\/h2>\n<p>The NFL Index rating is basically in line with Maye\u2019s ranking in an Athletic survey of NFL coaches and executives, that included \u201csix GMs, six assistant GMs, six former GMs, five other executives, eight head coaches and 19 other coaches, including 15 coordinators.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In that survey, Maye ranked 22nd overall of the 34 signal-callers rated in the poll. That placed him Tier No. 3 of five.<\/p>\n<p>But <em>Athletic<\/em> analyst Mike Sando admitted that evaluating Maye posed some significant challenges, with his rookie-year coach Jerod Mayo fired and new head coach Mike Vrabel, along with McDaniels and a whole new coaching staff now in place \u2014 along with the fact that the Patriots simply failed to field a competitive NFL team last year.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHis team was so bad,\u201d one offensive coordinator said in the survey. \u201cVince Lombardi couldn\u2019t have gotten that team any more wins than they got. Maye has promise. There is talent. There is ability. I think he looked very natural at the position.\u201d<\/p>\n<div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Jonathan Vankin JONATHAN VANKIN is an award-winning journalist and writer who now covers baseball and other sports for Heavy.com. He twice won New England Press Association awards for sports feature writing. He was a sports editor and writer at The Daily Yomiuri in Tokyo, Japan, covering Japan Pro Baseball, boxing, sumo and other sports. More about Jonathan Vankin<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The New England Patriots&#8217; quarterback of the future has a lot of room for improvement, according to the NFL&#8217;s new rankings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":88452,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-88451","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nfl"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Patriots Given Sobering Message About $36.6 Million Sophomore Quarterback - NEWS USA<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/sportnews.azontree.com\/?p=88451\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Patriots Given Sobering Message About $36.6 Million Sophomore Quarterback - 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