Patriots Mailbag: Finding a No. 1 wide receiver for Drake Maye

Patriots Mailbag: Finding a No. 1 wide receiver for Drake Maye originally appeared on NBC Sports Boston

The New England Patriots have some momentum entering their Week 9 showdown with the Tennessee Titans. After taking down the New York Jets at home, they’ll head to Nashville looking for their third win of the campaign.

Before we shift our focus to Sunday’s game, we’ve got some mailbag questions to answer. Let’s jump in. . .

Feels as though Drake Maye has a real chance to play on Sunday, John. We were told on Wednesday that Maye would be limited to 30 minutes at practice, which seemed to indicate he was in Phase 3 of the NFL’s concussion protocol.

Maye could conceivably get through that phase and pass the final two phases prior to Sunday’s game in Nashville. Jerod Mayo indicated in his Wednesday presser that the team hoped to know late in the week whether or not they’d have Maye available to them.

That, to me, is significant. If they feel there’s a decent chance Maye could play against the Titans, they should be working on the offensive game plan under the presumption he’ll be healthy. If it turns out that he’s not cleared, then you simply handle the start of the game the way they handled the last three quarters of their win over the Jets: Adjust a game plan built for Maye to best fit Brissett.

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There are base plays and concepts that both players know well from working on them all the way back to training camp so it’s not as though the team would be running a drastically different plan depending on the signal-caller behind center. But they should be able to tweak things — and quickly — if it turns out Maye can’t play. That’s part of the benefit of having a veteran with as much backup experience as Brissett has. Nothing he hasn’t had to do before.

Highly doubt that, even at 3-5, the Bengals are looking to deal Higgins. Lot of season left. And they are firmly in their championship contention window. As a free agent, though? He should be near the top of their list. Even if he’s not a true “No. 1” by some standards, he would give them an outside-the-numbers presence and contested-catch winner that they don’t have at the moment. They’ll have money to spend and a young quarterback who may have, by the end of the season, shown enough promise to encourage free agents with options to choose Foxboro.

Would be interesting if the Patriots would prefer to go that route in the offseason, or if they’d rather trade a haul and give up significant amounts of cash for a receiver in a Tyreek Hill-style trade.

The free-agent crop of wideouts for 2026 is more impressive than next year’s class. The names include Ja’Marr Chase, Terry McLaurin, Garrett Wilson, Drake London, DK Metcalf, Chris Olave and Deebo Samuel. If there’s a team out there that isn’t willing to pay its star receiver before said receiver gets into the final year of his deal, could the Patriots trade away picks to land the player and then extend him on a big-money deal? Would be worth a look later this coming offseason, perhaps after the draft.

Think it has to come down to what type of player is available to the Patriots, wherever they sit in the draft. If there’s a star-caliber tackle available, as impressive as Lowe has been at times this year, it’d be hard to pass.

It’s interesting to me, SoxNation, that receivers taken in the top 10 of the draft in recent years have actually looked like better investments than tackles taken in that same range. That’s in the last decade or so, at least. We did a very surface-level study on that very topic during Zolak and Bertrand recently, and it makes sense. Given where the college game has gone — fewer run-heavy programs, fewer true pass-blocking sets given the rise of the RPO, more passing — it should come as little surprise that the guys catching passes may be more polished than the guys blocking for the passers.

Impossible to say. They would like him to be on the field. They clearly made an effort to work him into the game last week by getting him on the field for kick returns a week ago. And I know they still believe in his talent. But he still has to work his way into being a dependable player offensively before he starts taking snaps away from players like Kendrick Bourne, DeMario “Pop” Douglas and Kayshon Boutte. Whenever Ja’Lynn Polk is out of the NFL’s concussion protocol, that’s another receiver he’d be contending with for work.

I think it’s safe to say multiple things are at play with Douglas’ workload, Brad.

It did seem as though the Jets were paying close attention to him on Sunday — multiple players jumped his route to help open up the deep part of the field for Kayshon Boutte’s 34-yard grab late in the fourth quarter. While he had a quiet day against the Jaguars in Week 7, he still appears to generate more in the way of defensive concern than any other Patriots wideout.

But Douglas also seems to be more productive with Drake Maye on the field. He saw nine targets against the Texans when Maye made his first start. And he matched that target total against the Jets in Week 3 when Maye entered late and threw Douglas’ way three times on eight attempts. If Maye is able to play on Sunday in Tennessee, maybe that’ll mean more in the way of looks for the shiftiest of Patriots receivers.

Maybe it was Bill Belichick’s reaction to the trade, but it surprises me that people are surprised by that return for Joshua Uche. This is a world in which pretty good players in contract years are going for conditional Day 3 picks or late-round pick swaps (DeAndre Hopkins, Diontae Johnson).

The return for Uche, who has five sacks in 22 games the last two years and will be a free agent in the offseason, wasn’t unexpected. He may play well for the Chiefs in a setting where he’ll see more obvious pass-rushing situations. But this is not a deal that has ruffled feathers in the locker room because of the return.

Fair enough! I don’t believe the Patriots see him as the true No. 1 they really need. In my opinion, he’s a fine No. 2 or a really good No. 3. Trade for him — and it didn’t cost Baltimore much so you’d get no argument for me if the Patriots did the same — and he’d probably be a rental for a team that likely isn’t going to win many games in the second half of the year. I understand not doing it.

The Patriots need someone who is an explosive threat, who can win in one-on-one situations, who they can lock up for multiple years. Johnson really isn’t that. But at that price, again, I wouldn’t have faulted them for giving him a try.

Well, Celtics Pride, Uche’s defensive playing time had dipped. And he wasn’t a factor on special teams. He played 13 special-teams snaps in the first two weeks of the season. He’s played six since. He’s a free agent after the season and the Patriots — because they should be active in free agency this coming offseason — likely weren’t getting a compensatory pick for him.

I think if they wanted to elevate Mathis, they would’ve found a way to get him on the roster with or without the Uche deal. This was about getting something for a player who wasn’t really contributing and was about to leave for nothing.

No term left on those deals, Enny. Essentially all are rentals, which limits their value on the open market. Sounds like the competition to land those players wasn’t smoldering hot, either. Put those things together and you have some low, low prices for players who’ve proven to have valuable skill sets.

I thought calling the offensive line a “strength” was a bit much, SVN. While they’ve improved, in my opinion, in pass protection… their running backs still averaged about 2.0 yards per carry. And there were two missed blocks on the final play that Rhamondre Stevenson was able to erase by plowing into the end zone with the help of pulling guard Michael Jordan and motioning tight end Hunter Henry. They’re improving.

One player who I think has really outplayed expectations would be Vederian Lowe. On the 34-yarder to Boutte at the end of the Jets game, he laid heavy hands on All-Pro defensive lineman Quinnen Williams and stopped him in his tracks. If Mayo was referencing the left tackle spot specifically, you could argue Lowe has been, when healthy, a “strength” relative to the rest of the offensive line.

Winning matters to me, Trygve. Players need to see results. Sometimes those are visible despite losses. But when the losses pile up, when you find ways not to win, as this team has been doing, it can be hard to remember how to win. They can’t let that settle into their DNA. While I understand draft position is valuable — particularly if they can parlay their first-round draft position into multiple valuable picks — to me, for this team, getting a handful of wins matters. Almost just so that they know what it feels like. Players and coaches alike.

You want it to become habitual eventually. Why not do everything in your power to start that now? And if they don’t have the No. 1 or 2 or 3 overall pick? Just puts more pressure on Eliot Wolf and Co. to execute their jobs at a high level and make the most of the picks they do have.

I’ve said many times I think Drake Maye was the best quarterback prospect in this draft. If they had ended up with Bo Nix, in my opinion, they would’ve been worse off. Significantly so.

If it’s a stud tight end, maybe. These discussions truly hinge on the talents available. Let’s see if we can get one of our year-round draft experts on Next Pats soon to break down where things sit at some of these positions now that we’re just about into November.

That would surprise me a little. Josh McDaniels is certainly more than capable. Not only as a play-designer and play-caller but quarterback-developer, too. But I think Mayo will want to go in his own direction as he tries to forge a path that’s different from his predecessor’s.

Let’s see how things go with Alex Van Pelt, though. He deserves a lot of credit, in my opinion, for helping develop Drake Maye. Changing offenses, concepts, play-calls, etc. for a young passer often isn’t a good idea. If he continues to play well this season, you could argue it’d be a bad idea to mess with what’s working. At that point the variable they’d likely want to adjust would be the talent around him, not which coach is in his ear.