New England Patriots fans hoping to see Drake Maye play a couple drives in Thursday night's preseason opener versus the Carolina Panthers at Gillette Stadium ended up being disappointed.
After veteran quarterback Jacoby Brissett started the game, Maye got his first chance to play in front of Patriots fans by taking over the offense for the team's second drive in the first quarter.
He connected with running back Antonio Gibson for a 12-yard pickup and a first down on a screen pass on his third snap. The drive ended four players later, and so did Maye's night.
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The No. 3 pick in the 2024 NFL Draft played just one series. He played six snaps and completed two of three pass attempts for 19 yards.
The lack of reps for Maye was puzzling, to say the least. NBC Sports Boston's Patriots insider Tom E. Curran took it a step further when discussing the topic Thursday night on Boston Sports Tonight.
"Huge missed opportunity," Curran told co-host Michael Felger, as seen in the video player above. "And I had a former coach text me and say, 'What are they doing?' This is a missed opportunity.
"This is the kind of thing that you wanna be able to get a massive amount of tape on and spend the entire day, entire weekend working on corrections, all the things that you can do. Nothing beats a preseason game because nothing is scripted and it's full contact. So a huge missed opportunity, I think, on the part of the Patriots."
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One of the popular explanations for Maye's lack of snaps is that the Patriots' offensive line starters didn't play much after that drive. And given the offensive line's lack of elite talent and sometimes-shaky play in training camp so far, why put Maye at risk of getting hurt?
Curran, however, isn't buying that explanation.
"It doesn't have anything to do with the offensive line because you can game it up, you can scheme it up, you can block it up well enough if it's a jailbreak, which it really wasn't," Curran said.
"You can still throw wide, you can run the football, you can still get those reps. You can still get the game-management opportunities. I don't understand the logic, and that's what I tweeted during the game is I'm interested to find out the logic behind it."
Bailey Zappe played quarterback during the next five possessions after Maye. Rookie quarterback Joe Milton played the last two in the fourth quarter and performed quite well.
The Patriots' second preseason game is next Thursday against the Philadelphia Eagles in Foxboro. The two teams will have a joint practice at Gillette Stadium before that matchup.
"We wanted to see Jacoby go out there and operate as well as Drake, mixing them in there with the ones," Patriots head coach Jerod Mayo said in his postgame press conference Thursday night.
"The rest of those guys, like Zappe and Joe, they went out there and finished up the game. Thought they did a good job. But that was kind of the thinking. Next week we have the Eagles. So we’ll practice against them and, who knows, the reps will probably change a little bit and we’ll see what happens in the game. But that was the thought process."