Maye-day Every Day
- Thread starter RedOctober3829
- Start date
Allen reminds me of a bigger and more athletic Brett Favre. He can certainly beat you and make some spectacular plays but the default with both those guys is taking big risks.
Hebert is the right comp.
Though, I’ll certainly and deservingly get shit for saying it but the left handed throw, ability to extend plays, mobile, good arm, sometimes tries to do too much - dare I say is Mahomes lite.
I'm going more Allen than Herbert. Drake sees open field and is more aggressive taking it with his legs than Herbert. They are also both monsters throwing on the run and improvising. Physically, Maye might be more like Herbert (for now), but I think the style of play more resembles Allen or young Aaron Rodgers.
Worth noting that Maye has already run for 233 yards; Herbert's career high is a shade over 300.
The Herbert comp isn't great, IMO. Calling Maye "slightly faster in a straight line" is a complete undersell to how dynamic Maye has been as a runner. Herbert only has five games in his 71 career starts where he has more than 40 rushing yards. Maye has two in six games. As a comparison, Josh Allen has 25 fifty yard games in 104 career games (Herbert has three).
I expect the rushing totals to drop as he matures, but they aren't in the same league as far as rushing QBs go.
I expect the rushing totals to drop as he matures, but they aren't in the same league as far as rushing QBs go.
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I’m with you. The way Maye decides to pick up and run looks more to me like how it does with Allen than anyone else. He is much further along as a scrambler than I expected. He’s not going to bowl people over the way Allen does - there simply aren’t that many players who can move and throw like this and have the weight to throw around like that, so I don’t think we ever see Maye play inside the 10 the way Allen does (er rather did prior to the James Cookening this season). But between the 20s I find their approach to going through reads then tucking and heading upfield to be more in line with each other than Herbert or Mahomes, including the willingness to take some contact. The tying TD last week was straight out of the Allen playbook as well getting it off right as the hit was coming.
The Herbert comp to me is 90% about the giant arm, and while Drake’s looks good so far it doesn’t look quite in that ballpark.
Mahomes is the Grey Goose vodka while Drake Maye is the Kirkland French vodka. They both taste the same but one is slapped with an elite name label.
Maye is deceptively fast. His QB run against the Jets topped out at 20.33mph according to NextGen Stats. BTW the Next Gen Stats website sucks. Trying to find it where it ranks this year but in the top 20, only Murray is in the list at 21mph.
Yeah. I had looked it up earlier today as well. I did see that 20.33 translates to a 4.2 40 yard dash time. I don't think he's "4.2 fast" - Lamar Jackson ran a 4.34 - but he's really freaking fast.
Maye is looking good, lot of raw promise. But you guys need to cut it out with the Mahomes stuff. Mahomes had 5000 yards, 50 TDs, and the MVP his first season as a starter. Relax.
The skill set is very similar, that doesn't mean he's refined like Mahomes in running an offense. It's a fair comparison.
Maye has thrown several would-be interceptions this year that have been dropped by the defense. You can also point to several drops by his own receivers. I'm not sure if those truly "cancelled out", but I understand he will have some growing pains going forward. The one yesterday was really bad, and I think he immediately knew that if he is going to throw it away, he needs to chuck it into the stands.
What excites me the most is the ability to move in the pocket and get his feet re-set. He also seems to make the quick decision to scramble when he sees open space. I will give credit to the coaching staff too, as it looks like they are adding more plays into the repertoire every week.
What excites me the most is the ability to move in the pocket and get his feet re-set. He also seems to make the quick decision to scramble when he sees open space. I will give credit to the coaching staff too, as it looks like they are adding more plays into the repertoire every week.
The head scratching plays mixed with the jaw drapping plays were all part of his film coming out of college.
I don't know if this is the exact clip I was thinking of- but it looks quite familiar:
View: https://youtu.be/H8G2U1tS4T0?t=1148
(timestamped to 19:08)
I don't know if this is the exact clip I was thinking of- but it looks quite familiar:
View: https://youtu.be/H8G2U1tS4T0?t=1148
(timestamped to 19:08)
Mahomes was mentioned 5 times on this page. Twice by you, once by someone saying he doesn't remind him of Mahomes, and once by someone comparing him to vodka.
I think Allen is the best comp, I got why people shied away from it, but he plays a lot like him. Scrambles like him (strong mostly straightline type scrambles, he isn't juking guys much, just using his physicality to get yards), also those plays like the Osborn one where he escapes, gets all the way to the sideline but keeps looking for that shot right along the sideline... that was such a Josh Allen Play.
Also like Allen.... sometime reckless ending his runs, some baffling picks
Also like Allen.... sometime reckless ending his runs, some baffling picks
I know everyones seen it, but focus on the LB having an angle, takes a bit of a bad angle, then Maye just hits the gas:
View: https://youtu.be/OgK0KDd5toQ?si=rbx7cW62nXoibKYE
He runs so straight up and down it doesn't look like he's running that fast.
If Osborn hadn’t stepped out (there wasn’t a really definitive replay but it appeared he likely did), that TD would be all any of us were talking about. The throw was that good.
Again, worth noting that Maye is ahead of Allen by quite some distance in his NFL development.
I don’t know about Maye’s comparables, but he is fast as shit, scientifically speaking. I know his clocked speed is pretty good, but his game speed seems a lot faster than a lot of “running quarterbacks” or guys who have been tagged with that label. Some of that seems to be how quickly he makes the switch to run. But he is also just straight fast.
He’s also bigger than I appreciated. Or maybe Caleb Williams is smaller:
He’s also bigger than I appreciated. Or maybe Caleb Williams is smaller:
This was a big reason for the Allen comps coming out of college (along with the passing resemblances in arm strength and size). My question is how often do QBs drop the head scratcher rate enough to be Josh Allen? FWIW, PFF suggests this may be relatively rare:
Is this all on Maye though? The OL has been a bit better, the defense was great yesterday. I think this is a combo of a lot of things, most notably Maye, but also the coaching seems better
It does help that Maye has the ability to run, he can throw the ball downfield and doesn't constantly take sacks. Instead of stacking 8 in the box constantly with no threat of any real passes, it's easier to coach with more options. It's not all because of Maye, but his abilities open up the playbook and what the defense can plan for.
It’s been a while, but I remember Allen’s early struggles being more about the inability to hit the broad side of a barn more than the questionable decision making that’s been the trademark Achilles’ heel of his great years. Maye is definitely guilty of the latter, but he’s throwing better balls for the most part than rookie Allen did to my eye (excluding the first appearance and first start where he was sailing a ton of passes).
All was at 52.8% and then 58.8% his first two years. I think your recollection is correct.
But your post says "Maye's impact" so was clarifying. It's really difficult to suss out and he's the easiest to point to. It's not coincidence that they have looked MUCH better since he took over, so I could get behind him being the main reason.
That throw to Osborne (?) in the end zone was elite. He has a special ability to make those throws that you don't see often from rookies.
Or maybe not, it's impossible to say if the marked improvement from pre-season happens if he plays from day 1. Could have, but also he could have been worse and not improved, and the team be just as bad and playing worse himself. No way to tell. What we can say is that whatever development plan they had him on, he appears significantly improved from the summer.
I’ve said from the start I wanted them to see if Maye showed any flashes, and as a team I wanted them to show improvement as the year went along. I’m pretty happy on both dimensions right now.
As an aside, for anyone who roots for them to lose because of draft positioning, re-watch the last play when the Bears were finally done, and look at the reaction on the Pats sideline. Coaches and players were all going nuts. These guys are competitive, put a lot into preparing for each game and want to win.
As an aside, for anyone who roots for them to lose because of draft positioning, re-watch the last play when the Bears were finally done, and look at the reaction on the Pats sideline. Coaches and players were all going nuts. These guys are competitive, put a lot into preparing for each game and want to win.
Also, now that they’ve found the next guy at QB they’ll spend the next 3-5 years, at a minimum, building around, the marginal value of a better draft pick position isn’t what it was last year. It certainly isn’t as important as showing a degree of culture building and development/identification of at least some of the next core of the team. I think anyone thinking that getting the third overall pick rather than the eighth overall pick or whatever is worth losing every game possible - the implications of that be damned - isn’t worth taking seriously. If the team lost out, for example, that would suggest the roster and coaching situation is more dire than it hopefully is, and you’re unlikely to stand a much better chance of finding talent a few picks higher as it is. It’s just not a healthy team building approach in the NFL (this is not the damn NBA), and it certainly isn’t one I am interested in as a fan.
That TD run against the Jets was a good example of his game speed. That play went from "nice pickup but the LB has him bottled up now" to "Holy @#$% Maye just glided right by him and he's going to score" in the blink of an eye.
FWIW, the Athletic Football Pod guys (Robert Mays and Derrik Klassen) describe Drake Maye as "Justin Herbert with 10% of Josh Allen's brain". (That's not a knock on his football intelligence, just a statement that he shares a little bit of that tendency of Allen's to make plays at times that are daring, reckless, and/or sometimes boneheaded).
He’s got some Brett Favre to his game. The Herbert and Allen comparisons for modern QBs make sense from the games he’s played. Sometimes pre draft comparisons are completely off base but so far Maye has been as advertised.
Luckily the advertisement for Maye was upside of a franchise QB; in contrast with upside of Kirk Cousins.
I saw Bourne postgame, and he was celebrating too. Nice to see after he was benched.
Don’t like that wording. People with ADHD or something might only read so far and conclude the guy is saying Drake does have 10% of Josh Allen’s brain.
I did find it somewhat amusing that a lot of the national commentary coming out of Sunday's game was about Williams and there were a lot of "but his offensive line" caveats thrown about. Do they also see what Drake Maye is working with on the OL?
They explained it just as I wrote above, lest anyone think that was the case.
Mays’ former partner, Nate Tice, who left the Athletic for Yahoo, actually had Maye as his top pick in the draft in large part because of his QB intelligence. He often praised Maye’s ability to go through his progressions on a play and talked about how at UNC, Maye was trusted to change the protections on a play, which is a responsibility rarely given to a QB in college, never mind one as young as he is. They in no way see him as a dummy, just a guy who sometimes, like Allen, lets his incredible physical gifts convince him to try to make a heroic play instead of accepting that the next down or series might afford him a better opportunity to succeed than the one he’s in.
I am too! From months of listening to Tice, I wanted him for the Pats even if they had wound up with the first pick in the draft. I know right now it’s hard to make an argument that he will turn out to a better pick than Daniels, but time will tell. I think all the teams taking QBs in the first round will wind up being happy with their picks as the years go on.