Drake Maye Had Me Hooting And Hollering For A 12-Yard Pass

Playing quarterback in the NFL's Patrick Mahomes–Josh Allen–Lamar Jackson era must be pretty demoralizing at times. That trinity pulls off the impossible on a regular basis, which makes even very good QB play pale in comparison. To wrest even a bit of the spotlight from the big three takes something magical. On Sunday, Drake Maye did just that, leading the Patriots to a 23-20 win over Allen's Bills with a game-winning drive that included one particularly awe-inspiring sequence:

Sunday night was Maye's first prime-time start, in a matchup that is about as tough as they come. The undefeated Bills had looked like the best team in football through four weeks, and Buffalo is always a brutal place to play, even outside of the bone-chilling winter. The Pats entered the game at .500 on the season, somehow both better (two close losses) and worse (one against the now 1-4 Raiders) than their record might suggest. But success this season would appear to be less about wins and losses themselves and more about the singular development of Maye, the third pick in last year's draft.

In that sense, the Pats' season is trending upward. Mike Vrabel and his staff's game-planning is notably conservative, and while that timidity may have made Sunday's win more difficult than it could've been, it has also helped Maye minimize his turnovers (he has only two interceptions this season) and juice his confidence while working in rhythm. Heading into Sunday's game, Maye was completing 74 percent of his passes for a healthy 247 yards per game (that average is dulled a bit by his performance of 14-of-17 for 203 yards in Week 4's blowout against the Panthers). He hasn't been perfect, but he's taking the steps towards the "very good" tier of QBs, which is a very good place for a second-year player to be.

On Sunday, though, he showed that he is also capable of the kind of impossible feats usually reserved for the big three. With 12 minutes left in the fourth quarter, the Pats sat on a 20-10 lead. But, the Bills being the Bills, they climbed back into the game. First, Buffalo scored a touchdown after driving down the field 74 yards in eight plays, thanks in part to two 15-yard penalties on the Pats defense. After getting the ball back down three with six minutes left, Buffalo drove down into Pats territory again—aided once more by a big penalty on the defense, this time pass interference—and it looked all set up for another Allen comeback. Thanks to Pats corner Christian Gonzalez, though, the drive stalled out with back-to-back incompletions, and Matt Prater tied the game up with a 45-yard field goal.

That gave Maye and the Pats plenty of time—2:17 and all three timeouts—to work with. It didn't take long for the magic to arrive. On the very first play of the drive, Maye ran a simple bootleg, faking the run to Rhamondre Stevenson and rolling out to his right in search of Stefon Diggs. However, the offensive line got all twisted around, and though center Garrett Bradbury made a feeble attempt to block DaQuan Jones, the Bills defensive tackle got free and gunned straight at Maye. Jones reached his target, but Maye threw out a stiffarm just strong enough to stop Jones from getting a real handle on him.

The stiff arm didn't completely free Maye from Jones's clutches, though, and as Maye started to fall, it looked like a dead play; the best he could have seemingly hoped for as he fell to the ground was to throw the ball away. But somehow, just before his knee touched the ground, Maye spotted Diggs by the sideline about two yards ahead of the line of scrimmage and threw a perfect pass that let Diggs catch the ball and turn in one motion. Diggs was able to run past his cover man and then shuffle his way to the Pats' 41-yard line, all from a play that looked more like a sack than a completion just moments before.

(Diggs, by the way, was on fire all night. His 146 receiving yards were the most by a former Bills player against the Bills, ever. He also came up with two incredible catches on the sideline and was generally a menace against an overmatched Bills secondary.)

In the grand scheme of things, and even in the smaller scheme of this drive, Maye's impressive escape wasn't the game-winner. Thanks once again to the Vrabel Philosophy, the Pats made this final drive much harder than it needed to be. One would expect that on the other side of the two-minute warning, the Pats would ride Maye's momentum from the Diggs play and keep the ball in his hands. Instead, the team came out in a big set after the break and handed the ball off to Stevenson for a one-yard gain. Given New England's abject failure in establishing the run all game—the team finished with 71 yards total on the ground—this was a curious time and location to run it. Thankfully, they put the ball back in Maye's hands for the next play, and he delivered with an inch-perfect 19-yard laser to Kayshon Boutte, in between the high safety and the cornerback playing the flat:

With the ball on the Buffalo 39, a few more yards would at least put a game-winning field goal in (Venezuelan!) rookie Andy Borregales's range, but the Pats were seemingly more concerned with Buffalo's timeouts than yardage, and so out came the run again. Stevenson got five yards on first down, stuffed at the line on second, and Maye got sacked for no loss (making a Herculean effort to make it back to the line of scrimmage) on third. I'm not sure if playing for a 51-yard field goal on the road with a rookie kicker was the correct play, but the Bills did use all of their timeouts to try to preserve some time to put on a drive of their own, so at least that worked out. I still don't want to let Vrabel and Co. off the hook, though. With Maye cooking, the Pats could have made this much easier for themselves with a bit more bravery on the final drive, and so even with Borregales's field goal looking good from about 65, and the Bills' eventual wet fart of a final drive, the Pats aren't above critique.

Maye himself might be, though. He may have finished with no touchdowns (although also with no interceptions), but his line was more of the same that he's racked up this season: 22-of-30, 273 yards, and his first career game-winning drive. He got a signature play on top of that, one that combined his athleticism with his steady cool. He out-dueled Allen on Allen's home turf, when the Bills had looked so unbeatable. One of the NFL's biggest strengths is its ability to create compelling narratives by the dozens, and Maye opening his prime-time career with this win, in this way, is almost too perfect. For one night, and especially for one play, Maye stood toe-to-toe with the best of the best, and came out looking like a great candidate to someday soon join or replace the names that today define what it is to be a great quarterback.