Drake Maye Is Out Here Doing The Lord's Work And Recruiting Free-Agents To Boston Across All Sports Telling Them "Boston Is The Greatest Sports City In The Country"
WEEI - Maye was asked during his weekly appearance on 'WEEI Afternoons' what he would tell free agents considering Boston as a destination, and he had a ringing endorsement regarding the market and fans.
"The way this city and the New England area embraces sports, and professional sports players, is one of the cool things I've been a part of," he said. "Watching them embrace me and embrace my teammates and some of the other athletes, and how beloved some of the famous guys - Big Papi and some of the greats. Tatum right now, Pasta with the Bruins. It's been really cool for me. I think it's the greatest sports city in the country.
"It's 24/7 caring about their teams and us, the Bruins, the Celtics, and the Red Sox. They care a great deal about us. I think it's the city of champions. That's what they say. We try to prove it and the fans take it well."
Question.
What did we do to deserve Drake Maye?
Seriously.
At some point the football gods are going to realize they put the return address labels on the wrong package and they meant to send this kid to Carolina. Or Cleveland. Or Chicago. Or a dozen other franchises who’ve never had a viable quarterback in their entire existence.
But until then, I am going to sit here in a Brady throwback, light a prayer candle, and ask the only reasonable question a New Englander can ask right now- and that is again, what exactly did we do to deserve Drake Maye?
Because to be totally honest, our tab should have been settled a long time ago.
We had two full decades of Tom Brady.
Six Lombardis. Nine Super Bowls. More AFC Championship Games than most franchises have winning seasons.
If anything, the universe owes us a solid thirty years in the quarterback wilderness. We should be out there wandering aimlessly with the Bears and Commanders, arguing about which bridge veteran will “game manage” to lose games by the fewest points while we talk ourselves into the next mid-round project.
But instead, our “punishment” was a Cam gap year and a couple seasons of Mac Jones' face-planting into his own offensive line while the locker room mutinied against Jerod Mayo in real time?
Quite the fucking rough patch, sure. But as far as curses go, that was barely a parking ticket.
And now that we have served our brief sentence, the parole board has apparently decided to hand us another 6-foot-4, rocket-armed choir boy who looks like he was grown in a hydroponic lab underneath Gillette Stadium.
On the field, Maye already feels too good to be true. His arm, the movement in the pocket, the poise, the overall "eye-test" competence.
He checks all the boxes.
You watch him climb the pocket, rip a 20-yard dig,
then hit a shot dead-on while on the move,
and it's like that first time we saw Brady in 2001 and thought quietly, “uh oh… this might be something.” Except this time around we KNOW what “something” can turn into around here, and it has honestly got to be fucking terrifying for the rest of the league.
And then he opens his mouth, and somehow it all gets even better.
He got asked by WEEI what he would tell free agents thinking about Boston, and he did not give the usual rookie boilerplate bullshit about “great organization” and “one day at a time.”
He basically delivered a tourism board commercial off the top of his head for the state that invented America (Obama's words, not mine). Talked about how the city wraps its arms around athletes, how wild it is to see the way fans revere guys like Big Papi, Tatum, and Pastrnak, how nonstop the passion is for the Pats, Bruins, Celtics, and Red Sox, and then dropped the line that Boston is the “greatest sports city in the country” and a “city of champions.”
You couldn't script that better in a Kraft Productions video.
That wasn't some media-coached robot speaking, that is a 23-year-old who just gets it. And has fully bought in to The Patriot Way. We're talkkng about a kid who walked into the same room where Brady once had to convince free agents that Foxborough is actually on planet Earth, (and to take a pay cut to come play here) and basically said, “If you truly love sports, why would you want to play anywhere else?”
And it doesn't stop there. This is the part where it veers from “lucky” into “are we being punked?.”
During the bye week last week, when most guys spend their break on a beach somewhere hydrating with tequila, Drake Maye spent his Sunday at Gillette playing flag football and hanging out with kids at a Big Brothers Big Sisters of Eastern Massachusetts event.
He and Demario Douglas were “Bigs for a Day,” running around with local youth, current matches, and a small army of prospective mentors, using their only free weekend to help sell people on the idea of showing up for a kid who needs them.
Full disclosure- Big Brothers and Big Sisters is a program and a cause extremely close to my heart.
It is not a photo-op charity. It is slow, unglamorous, life-altering work. It is long car rides, and homework, and showing up when no one else does. So when the new face of the franchise chooses that over Cabo on his first real break as an NFL star, that hits different. That's not PR, that is how you act when you were raised right.
This wasn't Maye's first foray into dedicating his time to helping people in need.
This is a clearly a good kid, raised by good people.
And that is the other part of this that feels very familiar.
Maye comes from one of those big, athletic, tight-knit families that remind you of the Gronks.
Who just all happened to be stud atheletes in their own regard.
A bunch of brothers, all competitors, all seemingly wired with that same goofy, humble “how did we get here” energy.
It is the exact kind of background you want at the most important position in sports- parents who clearly prioritized character, siblings who kept you grounded and in check, and a house where you earned things instead of being told you were special from age 8 because you could throw a football over the neighbor’s garage.
(Sidebar - Drake was also a stud shooting guard in high school. nbd)
On the field, he is already stacking numbers that get him mentioned with Marino and other alien life forms who were not supposed to exist in our atmosphere. Off the field, he is praising Boston like a local guy who grew up riding the Green Line to Fenway, and using his time off work to mentor kids at a place that has changed thousands of lives in this region.
Meanwhile the rest of the league is out there praying their first-rounder can show up on time, remember their playbook, and not get arrested before Christmas.
Patriots fans are debating whether it is too early to start comparing the new guy to the greatest of all time, while he is out there telling national radio that he loves our bat-shit insane, overbearing fan base and wants more people to come experience it.
Again, what the hell did we do to deserve this guy?
Perhaps it is 20 years of freezing our dicks off in those metal Foxborough Stadium bleachers before Kraft turned the place into a spaceport? Or maybe it is interest on the suffering our grandparents racked up before 2001? Or maybe we just have a front office that finally got one of these decisions right again?
Or maybe, just maybe, this is the universe admitting that as long as there is football being played in America, there is supposed to be a tall, unflappable assassin in a Patriots uniform dealing out misery to the rest of the league.
And if that guy also happens to be a genuinely good human who loves our city and spends his off days with Big Brothers and Big Sisters, then I am not asking any more questions, I am just going to say THANK YOU LORD, and enjoy the fact that lightning appears to have struck the same place twice.