By early November, Drake Maye knew it was time.
The 22-year-old had been thrust into a tricky leadership position. An NFL locker room is a delicate ecosystem. Respect is earned over time.
As the No. 3 overall pick, Maye was New England’s quarterback of the future, but he began the season behind Jacoby Brissett on the depth chart. In addition to being a rookie, he was backing up a Patriots captain, who continued to hold that title after Maye became the starter.
So Maye chose to bide his time until Week 10.
A month after taking over for Brissett, Maye was ready to assert himself. Following a sloppy practice, the rookie asked coordinator Alex Van Pelt if he could address the entire offense as a group.
In front of a room of older peers, Maye sought accountability from everybody, including himself. He’d dropped a snap during practice, the offensive line struggled in pass protection, and there were too many mental mistakes from the entire unit. Maye contended lack of attention to detail on Wednesdays was killing them on Sundays. Fellow rookie Ja’Lynn Polk dubbed the speech a “10 out of 10” and the veterans approved, too.
“It’s really great for Drake,” guard Mike Onwenu said. “He’s beyond his years.”
The following Sunday, the Patriots rolled the Bears, 19-3, for their lone double-digit win of the season.
In that moment, Maye felt his teammates needed to hear his voice. It was a glimpse of the leader he could become, rooted in a lesson he learned as an elementary schooler walking into a huddle in Huntersville, North Carolina.
‘When we get in the huddle, encourage them’
For 5-year-old Drake Maye, flag football wasn’t cutting it.
His older brothers were already tackling in the Junior Eagles Football Association, so at 6, Maye talked his way into a helmet and shoulder pads. His parents were leery given his age, but there was no keeping the youngest of their four boys off the field any longer.
Fortunately, Maye’s first peewee football coach was also his father, so Mark Maye could keep a close watch on his son.
The elder Maye knows far more football than the run-of-the-mill coach. A standout quarterback and captain at North Carolina in the 1980s, he spent a season with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, too. His love for sports was mirrored by his sons, so when the weekend rolled around, the Maye family was far more apt to be at a field than away on a camping trip.
Drake Maye gravitated toward natural leadership positions, playing point guard and shortstop. So, before he took the field as a young quarterback, his father had a message for him.
“‘Listen Drake, you’ve got ‘em. When we get in the huddle, encourage them,’” Mark Maye said. “‘Say some things.’ Nothing earth-shattering, but always really encouraged him be a leader.”
Though he’s graduated from running the huddle for the Junior Eagles to quarterbacking the New England Patriots, Maye still models his leadership after his father and those early teachings.
“Just watching him, not only a leader in the household, but a leader in sports in general,” Maye said in November. “The way that he approached forcing me at a young age to get in the huddle, and say something to the team, or break the team down… He introduced to his boys about how to lead and what it takes.”
And then he got out of the public eye. In season, Mark Maye is content being a quiet football father, declining interview requests to leave the spotlight to his son.
“That’s really neat that Drake said something like that,” he texted at the time. ”Very proud of him!! It’s about him. Not an old fat guy like me.”
The throughlines between father and son are easy to spot.
Amidst a 4-13 season, Maye was often the Patriots’ lone bright spot, but didn’t carry himself as such. The rookie deflected praise to his teammates for successes and took ownership of failures, even when the blame necessarily didn’t lie with him.
Maye tried to pump up his teammates up with positive reinforcement and was rarely critical of others — especially publicly — a trait which can also be traced back to his father.
“Sometimes you have to maybe get on guys, but I never really was a big proponent of a lot of yelling,” the elder Maye said. “I know when I was coming along I always appreciated guys really being positive with me and encouraging me. So I’ve always tried to pass that along simply because that’s what I liked as a player.
“I know that there are certainly some times (to yell if players) aren’t putting out the effort, but listen, we’re all trying to catch the ball. We’re all trying to hang onto the ball. We’re all trying to throw a complete pass. We aren’t trying not to do those things. But sometimes you’re going to miss a throw. Sometimes a ball might be dropped. Those things happen.”
Watching him for 17 seasons, the patriarch has seen his son’s leadership style take shape. He believes it is rooted in gaining the trust and respect of his teammates, and then going from there. He’ll lead by example first, and speak up when the situation calls for it.
“He likes to get to know the guys,” Mark Maye said. “He likes to feel like he has a pretty good relationship. He encourages them. He could be a little more vocal sometimes maybe, but he’s gotten a lot better with that, and I think that will continue to come as he gets older, as he gets more comfortable in his role.
“I do think Drake is pretty genuine,” he added.
Maye was mindful of those relationships as a rookie. He wanted to build bonds around the locker room, so he made a conscious effort to sit with different teammates during lunch and send texts when they were away from Gillette Stadium.
“Little things like that can go a long way,” Drake Maye said. “Trying to get each guy on a personal level, then they feel like, ‘Hey, I know Drake and he cares about me.‘”
‘It’s something I felt like Tom did’
Heading into the 2025 season, this is Drake Maye’s offense.
Brissett is gone — the veteran signed with Arizona — and when Week 1 rolls around, fans in Foxborough will look to Maye to lift the Patriots back toward prosperity in the wake of two 4-13 seasons.
In Mike Vrabel, New England hired a no-bones-about-it leader at the top of their organization. But to step forward as contenders, Maye will need to keep growing in his leadership role, too. The quarterback knows this. On Radio Row at the Super Bowl, he repeatedly said he wants to sharpen those leadership skills in a crucial Year 2.
Vrabel returns to New England with 14 years of experience as an NFL player and another 12 years as a coach. He’s seen how different quarterbacks can lift a locker room. So in one of his first meetings with Maye, Vrabel made a point to deliver a message to his young quarterback.
“You just have to invest time,” Vrabel said. “The biggest thing is being able to include everybody. When you include everybody, you get to know them. Quarterbacks are afforded a lot of privilege around town. They go to restaurants, they go to games, and I said, ‘Hey, always remember that you can always invite other people that may be outside of your immediate group and use those as experiences and get to know players you may not know right now. I think that was a good example I tried to give him.”
Vrabel cited his own time with the most decorated quarterback in NFL history as proof.
“It’s something I felt like Tom (Brady) did, and I don’t want to be like, ‘Oh be Tom Brady,’” Vrabel said. “I’m just saying players that I’ve been around were like, ‘Hey let’s go to this game. Let’s go to the Celtics. Let’s go to the Red Sox. You can use those avenues…’ he has to lead in his own way. But again, the better you know somebody, the better you can hold him accountable.”
With a roster overhaul coming, Maye will need accountability from plenty of new faces in the coming months. He’ll also need to foster a relationship with Josh McDaniels and learn his offense, which is a notoriously demanding task.
Mark Maye doesn’t think that’ll be a problem.
“Fortunately, he takes after his mom: He’s a pretty smart guy,” he said. “He’s used to learning a new system. He’ll work at it. He’ll be fine with what Coach McDaniels and also Coach Vrabel want to do, I believe, fairly quickly … He’s always really picked up things well.”
Maye showed that during his early November speech, and with a more sure-footed place in the team’s leadership hierarchy, his teammates will need to hear even more of that voice moving forward.
“I was just trying to get through to them and probably fumbled some words trying to do it,” Drake Maye said. “But I think those guys respected it.”
Karen Guregian contributed to the reporting in this story.
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