Sunday Feels Like It's Going to Be a Huge Statement Game for Drake Maye and the Patriots

Carmen Mandato. Getty Images.

Any time you shoehorn an imprecise word like "feels" into a headline, you've got to do so with caution. No Journalism professor would ever let you get away with such an unquantifiable statement. I'm sure newspapers in early December 1941 weren't posting headlines like, "It Sort of Feels Like the Japanese Imperial Navy is Planning Something." Facts don't give a Tuppenny Fuck about the emotional state of an aging blogger with a preternatural fixation on a football team. Either the Patriots or Steelers are going to win and there's no column in the AFC standings for how it's regarded. I get that. 

And yet, I stand by my statement. 

I'm like Scotty in that Star Trek: TOS episode where he tells Spock the Enterprise doesn't feel right. And rather just dismiss it as the ravings of a drunken Scotsman, Spock looks into it and finds out some alien entity has disassembled the ship down to the molecular level and put it back together. Just not accurately enough to fool a drunken Scotsman. Except my feels aren't telling me something's a little off. I'm feeling like we're at the start of something big. With Drake Maye in particular and the Patriots on the whole. 

Let's count the ways. First, unquestionably, by any metric, Maye is coming off the best game of his 14 career starts:

With the level of accuracy on deep balls we haven't seen since He To Whom Maye Shall Not Be Compared:

Whether he was able to stand in the pocket and set his feet:

… or Miami blitzed him:

And to repeat what those last two posts pointed out, he did it no turnover-worthy plays. 

That last post about the blitz is especially something to take note of because according to some analysis, Pittsburgh DC Teryl Austin's defense blitzes 35.8% of the time - driven by his 5-man "Dog Rush" concept -  which is 5th most in the league. And Pro Football Focus has them graded 4th best in pass rush. Again, one of the true strengths of the Patriots during the Dynasty years, particularly against Dick Lebeau's Zone Blitz, which that QB I Won't Mentioned disassembled like the Enterprise, but left the pieces scattered across the galaxy. 

Another huge factor will be the run game finding itself in Miami after going missing in Week 1 at home against Las Vegas. Which would give Maye another club in his bag to use:

NBC Sports Boston - Against the Steelers on Sunday, they'll have another opportunity to be the kind of balanced football team Mike Vrabel wants. 

The Steelers have allowed 100-yard rushers in back-to-back weeks. They're fifth-worst in the NFL in rush yards allowed, and they've given up 15-yard runs on nine separate occasions in two games. According to Next Gen Stats, teams have regularly run away from star edge-defender T.J. Watt -- who has played 90 percent of his plays on the offensive right -- to the tune of 6.0 yards per carry. …

Josh McDaniels has his Maye-led offense utilizing [12-personnel] at the ninth-highest rate in the league. …  And McDaniels keeps turning to it because it has worked through two weeks. New England is the fifth-best in football … with Hunter Henry and Austin Hooper on the field.

One of the reasons the Steelers might be so susceptible to giving up big plays with two tight ends on the field is that their linebacker group appears to be one that can be manipulated. If the Patriots can run the football and McDaniels can dip into his play-action bag, he could have second-level defenders like Patrick Queen and Payton Wilson -- both of whom have great athletic traits -- chasing their tails.

Next, so far Maye's ability to run has had opponents playing more much more zone against him:

Which is not what the Steelers like to do:

The Athletic (paywall) -  The Steelers haven’t played a ton of man coverage. They’re using Cover 1 (man coverage with one deep safety) on 16.7 percent of passing plays, which is about league average. When they do, they rank 22nd in EPA (-32.9 per snap) and 25th in defensive success percentage (45.5 percent), according to TruMedia. More alarmingly, 42.9 percent of opponents plays have gone for 10-plus yards against the Steelers’ man coverage.

In a related way, the Steelers have been far too soft over the middle of the field, no matter what defense they’re playing:

Finally, since I appealed to emotions in the headline, I might as well end this on how Maye feels about facing Aaron Rodgers:

SI -  Maye has never concealed his unabashed fandom of the legendary four-time All-Pro. The 23-year-old grew up idolizing Rodgers. Recently, Maye fondly recall watching “his first Super Bowl” as the future Hall-of-Famer lead his Green Bay Packers to victory in Super Bowl XLV in 2010. 

If truth be told, the then rookie appeared to be in awe just watching Rodgers warm-up for last year’s Week 3 matchup between the Patriots and Jets at MetLife Stadium.

“He’s very talented throwing the football, and he's got some swagger to him,” Maye told reporters during his mid-week press conference. “I think it’s just special, how he throws the football. I remember watching it last year when [former Patriots QB] Jacoby [Brissett] was playing, I think we were playing at the Jets, and I was watching him warm up. It's just something you don't take for granted, somebody who throws the football that way. Just like I said, his swagger, and yeah, big fan.”

That aspect might not account for much, but it's not nothing. In fact, I'll admit it could backfire given that Maye himself has said he sometimes gets too amped up at the start of games and starts sailing passes. So he'll have to slay that dragon. But the chance to go opposite his boyhood hero who he says he's tried to emulate is another factor to consider in what my gut is telling me will be a statement game. Not just telling me; it's screaming at me that we're two days away from another giant leap forward in Maye's development. A chance to start stacking games and emerge as the true top-tier NFL quarterback he looked like last year. While winning a game where his team is a home underdog, for one of the few times the rest of the year. 

If I turn out to be right, you'll hear about this post Sunday afternoon. If not, then thanks for reading. And let's all just forget I ever said any of this.