Pats Pulpit
The New England Patriots celebrated a home win against the Cleveland Browns on Sunday to improve to 6-2 on the year. Their matchup with the top-ranked defense in football wasn’t always pretty, but in the end the Patriots did enough to beat yet another opponent by multiple scores, 32-13.
Let’s get into some lessons learned from the team’s fifth straight victory.
Drake Maye might have played his worst 30 minutes of the season in the first half on Sunday. The Patriots’ second-year quarterback threw a terrible interception, was erratic with the ball, and had trouble getting the ball out early, taking multiple coverage sacks.
And then, the flip switched. Maye drove his team to a go-ahead field goal at the end of the first half, and then played like the Drake Maye we’ve seen this season from the third period on. He led three straight touchdown drives without throwing an incompletion to open the second half, eventually finishing 18-for-24 for 282 yards with three touchdowns and an interceptions as well as 53 rushing yards on just four carries.
“Just bouncing back from adversity,” Maye said after the game. “This is that league. One of the best players on the edge, maybe one of the best players in the league on the edge. So, just battling back and continuing to run it in play action and boot and just trying to be unpredictable on offense. I think Coach called a great game. Good to handle adversity and come out of halftime, and to score three touchdowns in the third quarter was big.”
Part of the Patriots’ slow start was that they were simply running their regular offense in the first half. When you’re playing against the best defense in the NFL, you need to mix things up, and, as Maye mentioned, try to keep them off balance. To his credit, Josh McDaniels came out in the second half and reached down into his bag to get the Patriots offense going.
His calls included a double pass from Rhamondre Stevenson to Maye to Mack Hollins for a big gain; he called more outside runs to get TreVeyon Henderson going; and he had Maye moving outside the pocket more often to deal with the pressure provided by standout edge Myles Garrett. That is how you kickstart an offense, and how you show the league that you can do a lot of different things in a lot of different ways.
Part of the reason that Drake Maye and the offense as a whole have been so good is because of McDaniels, and he proved again on Sunday that he’s one of the best offensive coordinators in the league.
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