Is benching Drake Maye a good move for the Patriots?

Collinsworth got his wish last Thursday when Patriots coach Jerod Mayo named Jacoby Brissett the starter for Sunday’s season opener at Cincinnati. The announcement was awkward and raised suspicions about who makes the decisions, but Mayo and the Patriots ultimately made a decision that many in the NFL world agree with.

In talking to several former players-turned-analysts in recent weeks, it was hard to find anyone who thought the Patriots should rush Maye into the lineup for Week 1.

“Ideally, I would always like to allow rookie quarterbacks to never play their first season,” said CBS senior analyst Tony Romo, a former undrafted rookie who went undrafted for 3 1/2 years. “I just think you’re going to make a lot more mistakes the earlier you play, and you can put yourself in danger, honestly.”

Tom Brady, now a lead analyst for Fox Sports, recently called it a “tragedy” that so many rookie quarterbacks are now on the field. Even Mayo said this spring: “I don’t think a lot of rookies are ready to go out there and play. Coming in as a rookie, I hope (Maye) is a sponge.”

Of course, there are outliers, like Houston’s CJ Stroud, who helped the Texans go from 3-13-1 to 10-7 in his first season. And the “leave them all alone” argument ignores the valuable experience rookies gain by making mistakes. Cincinnati’s Joe Burrow went 2-7-1 as a rookie, tore an ACL, then returned in his second season to play in the Super Bowl. Peyton Manning threw a rookie-record 28 interceptions to lead the Colts to a 3-13 record, then improved to 13-3 in his second season.

“I remember Peyton always saying, ‘It’s hard to get better if you don’t play,’” said longtime NFL quarterbacks coach Clyde Christensen, who coached Manning and Brady and coached Maye last year at North Carolina. “I don’t think there’s a way to learn how to do that without doing it.”

But Mayo and the Patriots made the right decision, even if they made it more complicated than it needed to be.

“For me, the biggest thing was playing and learning from playing,” said CBS analyst Matt Ryan, the 2008 Rookie of the Year who improved a 4-12 team to 11-5. “But if you look at Aaron Rodgers, Patrick Mahomes, there are effective ways to do both. So I think it depends on the situation. You’re a product of your environment.”

Foxborough’s environment is why it makes sense to take your time with Maye. Six weeks into training camp, the Patriots are still reshaping their offensive line and determining the best combination. The left tackle position is particularly concerning because it’s still unsettled. The Patriots also don’t have many established players at receiver.

In his rookie season, Ryan joined a Falcons team that featured a slew of stars like Roddy White, Michael Turner and John Abraham, and that had struggled the year before due to the unique Michael Vick situation. This year, Chicago’s first-round pick Caleb Williams, who will start the opener, has veteran receivers Keenan Allen and DJ Moore, up-and-coming receiver Rome Odunze and one of the league’s stingiest defenses.

The Patriots, however, don’t know what they have around Maye. It’s best to give the team a few weeks to iron out some kinks (assuming that can happen).

“They’re still figuring out his support team,” said CBS’ Jason McCourty, who has called two Patriots preseason games on television. “If he gets to the point where he can run the offense and elevate guys, you go for it. But you know for sure that you have a guy like Jacoby from a leadership standpoint, from a knowledge standpoint, he can probably elevate the guys around him.”

The last thing the Patriots need is for Maye to get hurt early in his rookie season or lose confidence.

“If you judged me on my first six games, I probably would have been cut if I wasn’t a first-round pick,” said CBS’s JJ Watt, who won the NFL’s Defensive Player of the Year award in his second season and is on his way to the Hall of Fame. “Sure, every once in a while you get a guy like C.J. Stroud who comes in and dominates, but I think you have to let the guy grow and learn and also take in everything around him. Just give him time.”

The information on Maye coming out of North Carolina was that he needed time to develop. One AFC executive said his team viewed Maye as “very talented, but a project.” One NFC executive said his team viewed Maye as “obviously a very good athlete for the position” with “a very high ceiling,” but “it would probably be best for him to sit down and work on his footwork, and match his feet with his eyes more consistently.”

The Patriots aren’t going anywhere in 2024 whether Maye plays in Week 1 or not. He could certainly see the field early in the season if Brissett struggles or gets injured, but the Patriots made the right decision to bench him initially.

“With the changes on the offensive line, with the youth at receiver, I think it’s a really tough task to ask of a guy that young,” Collinsworth said. “He’s going to have a game plan with defenses he’s never seen in his life. He’s not even 22 yet.

“I’d like to see him watch Jacoby Brissett run practice, run the group, follow the game plan, memorize everything you do. If you lose the game, you get beat up by the media, just let him watch somebody else do it for at least a month, and then if you feel like it’s time to change, that’s probably what I would do.”

You can contact Ben Volin at [email protected].