OBF: Maye is proving he’s the future

On the eve of the 2016 election, Donald Trump rallied voters in Manchester, New Hampshire.

That night, he announced endorsements from Tom Brady and Bill Belichick.

Trump relayed a phone call he said he received from the Patriots QB.

He read a letter of support written by the team’s head coach.

Verbal jabs at Hillary Clinton and the senior senator from Massachusetts soon followed.

“I’ll make you a deal,” Trump told the crowd at SNHU Arena. “You can have Pocahontas. I’ll take Tom Brady and Bill Belichick.”

The art of the steal, indeed.

The fallout from Belichick’s letter of support for Trump was especially catastrophic.

The Patriots locker room was roiled.

Fake fans from Sudbury stopped following the team.

Mutiny Everywhere!

Update: The Patriots lost their first game after Election Day 2016 before running the table and winning Super Bowl 51 after trailing 28-3 to the Falcons.

The more things change in Foxboro, the more they remain the same elsewhere.

Monday night, Trump joined Belichick and Jim Gray on their “Let’s Go!” podcast.

They stuck to sports.

As do we.

Here’s an all-or-nothing Trumpian deal mirroring his offer from 8 years ago that might work today in Foxboro.

“You can have the rest of the 53-man roster, Jerod Mayo, Alex Van McDaniels, Eliot Wolf, Robert Kraft, Jonathan Kraft, all the Krafts, Robin Glaser, the Orchids of Asia Day Spa, One Patriot Place and the Lighthouse. I’ll take Drake Maye.”

There is no more doubt that Maye is the future of this franchise.

Maye continues to take giant steps with each snap. Each completion. Each scramble. Each missed read. Each overthrown ball. Each interception.

But there is no longer any reason for debate, discussion, or contrarian schtick.

Maye is the Patriots starting QB until at least the 2026 midterms. (Injuries notwithstanding.)

And in the NFL, everything starts with the quarterback.

Any NFL player can be seriously hurt on any snap. That is the bargain. Sitting Maye over injury concerns this year begs the question for next year. And 2026. And so on.

Yes, Maye threw 2 picks and ended Sunday’s loss to the Titans with an interception.

You want to know who else ended his Patriots’ career with an interception?

Hint: It wasn’t Mac Jones. His final snap in a Patriots’ uniform ended with a sack.

Hint: It wasn’t Cam Newton. He took a knee.

Hint: His interception was a pick-six against those same Titans.

No one is foolish enough to make any comparison between Maye and Brady. But they demonstrate some of the same important characteristics when it comes to inspiring leadership on the football field.

Both are fearless. Both take accountability. Both absorb, rather than deflect, criticism.

Part of that may be because Maye and Brady were both the youngest kid in a very athletic and competitive family. While Brady’s older sisters likely did not dish out the same sort of physical punishment as Maye’s older brothers, they did torment him at every athletic opportunity.

Maye won the remaining hearts and minds of New England on the final play of regulation in New England’s overtime 20-17 loss in Nashville.

Drake’s Dash isn’t Revere’s Ride.

But the Maye-Hem is real.

The baby-faced Maye may be carded when he’s 40. But there’s no doubting his toughness or grit at age 22.

Pro athletes rarely find immediate acceptance by the simple principles of hard work, effort, film study, and more hard work. It’s more often one single play that can define a career. (The willingness to dive head-first for a first down doesn’t hurt, either.)

Fairly or otherwise.

Ten years ago this month, Odell Beckham Jr.’s one-handed TD catch against the Cowboys set a new standard for “Best Catch Ever.” The grab reached logo status. It has been evoked subsequently across all levels of football, from Pop Warner to the NFL, every time someone makes a catch using five or fewer fingers.

We all remember OBJ’s catch.

What many may not remember is that the Giants lost that game. Tony Romo threw a pair of TD passes to Dez Bryant in a 31-28 comeback Cowboys win. The Cowboys won back then.

Drake’s Dash won’t share the same iconic space as OBJ’s catch. But it has become the signature play for the Patriots in the post-Tom Brady Era.

Thanks to today’s ability to split the atom in infinite ways when it comes to NFL analytics, it has been examined as much as the Zapruder Film.

Next Gen Stats tells us Maye scampered for 11.8 seconds before flinging the ball to Rhamondre Stevenson in the end zone. He evaded 5 potential tacklers. He covered 26.2 miles before he threw the ball. Or so it seemed.

That was the second-most time a QB had to throw a TD pass since they started charting such things in 2016. The longest was Jayden Daniels on his “Hail Mary” strike against the Bears a week earlier.

Maye was the Patriots’ offense Sunday. He accounted for 301 of the team’s 306 yards; 95 of those came on the ground.

While no one is making Maye-Brady comparisons, Josh Allen’s name was spoken in the same sentence as Maye’s on Sunday.

“That’s young Josh Allen 2.0,” Davon Godchaux said. “I played Josh Allen in Miami his rookie year, and he didn’t look that good.”

The Drake Maye-Josh Allen Hype Train met the same fate as the Red Line during a mid-August rush hour. “I call him Drake Maye 1.0,” Mayo said Monday.

Drake Maye 1.0 is plenty good enough for these Patriots.

And better than anything else in Foxboro.

Deal or no deal.

Bill Speros (@RealOBF and @BillSperos) can be reached at bsperos1@gmail.com.