Drake Maye left Seattle carrying the kind of loss quarterbacks remember.
The Patriots were in position to walk out with a win after building a 10-0 lead, but Maye’s night unraveled late in a 13-10 loss to the Seahawks. He threw three interceptions in the fourth quarter, and the final one sealed it. Instead of giving the ball away and living to fight another down, he forced a throw in the end zone to Mack Hollins and Josh Jobe picked it off.
Maye didn’t try to soften it afterward.
"It was just unacceptable," Maye said postgame. "We had a chance to send it (to) overtime at the worst. The only thing you could(n't) do is turn the ball over and that's what I did."
The first mistake came when he tried to hit Romeo Doubs down the left sideline. The next drive, he missed DeMario Douglas on a throw over the middle. Then came the backbreaker.
Maye was hard on himself after the game, and deservedly so. He said part of the challenge was that A.J.
Brown had left one quarter earlier with an ankle injury, and part of it was dealing with the reigning Super Bowl champs in their own building. But the bigger issue was the way the Patriots quarterback handled the pressure once the game tightened.
For a player New England wants to see make the year three leap, those are exactly the kinds of decisions that can’t show up. Maye is young, but he’s also supposed to be the face of a team with Super Bowl aspirations and the kind of talent that puts him in MVP conversations.
On this night, he didn’t look like a veteran. He looked too much like the quarterback who was still trying to find his way.
Rhamondre Stevenson pushed back on the idea that the loss should be pinned on one player.
"It’s not on one person at all. This is a team game, we win together and we lose together," running back Rhamondre Stevenson said.
"I wouldn't pinpoint on one single person in that room. We all have to get better.
Back to the drawing board like I said and figure it out."
Maye himself pointed to the moment the game shifted for him.
"I just stopped being patient. That was the big thing," he said. "We were patient and dumping it off and trying to move the chains and we avoided a lot of three-and-outs and that was something we try to earn more plays and the explosives will come, so just stopped being patient and made decisions that ended up, like I said, cost us the game."
The talent is still there. His arm strength and athleticism will keep giving the Patriots a chance. But if New England is going to get the version of Maye it needs, the next step is going to come from the part of the game he lost in Seattle: patience.
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