What is the Patriots Plan for Developing Their QBs? It Beats the Hell Out of Me.

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I'll admit right from the jump that trying to make sense of preseason fauxball is a fool's errand. It's the sports equivalent of trying to understand modern art. You're just supposed to stare at it and appreciate it, not try to interpret what the artist was trying to say by splashing a rectangle of red paint on a canvass or contemplate the meaning of three pieces of crooked rebar with a metal bug on top. (Which, as an aside I literally saw at a gallery in Athlone, Ireland last summer. That was memorable only because it was the moment I decided walking to the pub through a driving rainstorm was preferable to trying to fake interest in something that would've gotten me a C- in shop class at Weymouth South Junior. But I digress.) Football coaches work in mysterious ways. And never more so then when they're handing out reps in a game that's just meant to get you ready for the actual games. 

At the same time, I'm an old. So I remember a time when there was a definite pattern to these things. You got some work for your starters. You gave the bulk of the time to your depth guys to sort out your depth chart. Then got a look at the roster bubblers in order to firm up the last couple of spots on the 53-man and the practice squad. Until you got to the last game, which was all about not getting anyone hurt, so you send the scrubs out there for 60 minutes like lambs to the slaughter. With rare exceptions like the time in 2018 when Jason McCourty took an obscene amount of snaps deep into the 4th quarter because the Pats had released one of their safeties earlier in the day and lacked available bodies. 

But for the most part, it was a simple formula, easily understood by even the most halfwitted blogger. Established veterans play a little. Unestablished guys and rookies use these games to get established. Coaches then get film they can use for evaluation. Everybody wins. 

And that's more or less how it's been done around the league through one week of preseason. Generally speaking, rookie quarterbacks have been playing. Two exception have Caleb Williams and Jayden Daniels, for the obvious reasons that they're both locked in as Week 1 starters. But Jack Plummer got 27 dropbacks, Spencer Rattler got 20, JJ McCarthy took 19, and Michael Penix Jr. got 16. 

So what gives in New England? 

• Joe Milton, 6th round pick and very much a long-term project: 20 total snaps, 8 dropbacks, 6 pass attempts
• Drake Maye, 3rd overall pick and the vessel into which his franchise has poured their hopes: 6 snaps, 3 dropbacks, 3 attempts

Damned if I know. And those while those three attempts were the same as Daniels, he at least got to throw it deep and finsihed with 45 yards. Maye was the Mayor of Checkdown City with 19 yards, fewest in the league among the 16 rookie QBs who've played.

And with days to think about it and watch the rest of Maye's draft class getting much needed experience, it makes even less sense. What exactly is the goal here? Are you trying to develop him? Protect him? Hide him? Try not to embarrass him? Bring him along slowly? Because if it's the last explanation, I'm wholeheartedly in favor of it. In the regular season. Right now is precisely the right time to be putting him in the simulator and giving him flight hours. I mean, if not now, then when exactly? 

If the argument is that Maye doesn't need the reps but Milton and Bailey Zappe (36 snaps, 24 passes attempted), then great. That's fantastic news. But no one's saying that. In fact, Jerod Mayo explaining the logic behind his decision just muddied the waters further:

Q: You talked about it a little bit after the game last night, but could you go a little further into why you felt it was important for a veteran like Bailey Zappe to get so many reps last night, and for a youngster like Drake [Maye] to only get six snaps? Talked about it a little bit after the game.

JM: Yeah, going into the game, I talked to AVP [Alex Van Pelt], [Ben] McAdoo, and the entire offensive staff about what's the plan for the quarterback. This conversation has been ongoing, and so this has always been the plan to develop these guys this way. We'll see how it looks going forward. It won't always be the same because we're still evaluating everyone on the roster, but especially the quarterbacks. …

I would also say during practice, he gets a lot of reps. Then going into the Eagles week, this honestly is a huge week for everyone to practice against the Eagles, and then really we'll see how the reps kind of break down in the game. But I expect Drake to get more reps than he did in the first game against the Eagles.

So the plan all along, ironed out ahead of time by Mayo and his offensive braintrust, was to give Maye a cameo in his first time out, then increase his screen time as we get closer to Week 1? Like the way they introduced Thanos into the MCU with a post-credit scene? 

Well, that IS a plan, I suppose. I'm just dumbfounded as to how it benefits Maye's development, which is crucial to the fate of the entire operation going forward. It's wasting precious time. And that time is the entire point of having these games in the first place. It's certainly not because preseason is fun to watch. Because it's the equivalent of watching highway death videos in Drivers Ed. A necessary evil that no one enjoys. 

Again, I say this as someone who is all about letting Jacoby Brissett take the wheel for as long as the coaches need to get Maye ready. But at the same time, Maye is the QB2, meaning if Brissett gets hurt (a distinct likelihood given the state of the offensive tackles), the start of his pro career is going to come sooner than expected. And I don't see how six snaps and three dumpoff passes are supposed to get him ready. 

Then again, right now I don't understand a lot of things about this team. Not yet, anyway. Maybe until they sort this stuff out, the coaches should limit themselves to "We're doing what's in the best interet of the football team" answers. Saying anything more just seems to do more harm than good.