Patriots writer hopes team doesn’t waste early Drake Maye career by ‘spinning tires’

Saturday’s tripleheader features a fantastic quarterback matchup between the Chargers’ Justin Herbert and the Patriots’ Drake Maye. The contest also provides a picture of where New England doesn’t want to be in four years.

“With all due respect to the Chargers,” wrote Evan Lazar on Patriots.com, “one thought that comes to mind when evaluating Herbert’s first four seasons as it pertains to New England is, ‘Don’t waste four years of Maye by spinning the tires.’”

In other words, Lazar said, Herbert’s first five seasons are a good teaching tool for the Patriots (3-12), who kick off the NFL’s annual tripleheader with the Chargers (9-6) on Saturday (1 p.m. ET, NFL Network).

Herbert (3,243 and 18 this season) can become only the third player ever to reach 3,000 passing yards and 20 touchdown passes in each of his first five seasons. Only Peyton Manning and Russell Wilson have done that. While Manning and Wilson had stable coaching staffs early in their careers, Herbert has had four head coaches and four play-callers over his first five seasons.

Herbert (20,466) needs 153 passing yards on Saturday to surpass Manning (20,618) for the most by a player in his first five years in NFL history, yet the team Chargers have just one playoff appearance and, in that game, blew a 27-0 lead in a 31-30 loss.

Dianna Russini from The Athletic reported on Dec. 14 that team owner Robert Kraft has privately assured those close to him that he’s committed to Maye’s first NFL head coach, Jerod Mayo. If that proves true, and if offensive coordinator Alex Van Pelt returns for 2025, Maye already will have a leg up on Herbert entering his second season. Before the 2021 season, Los Angeles replaced head coach Anthony Lynn with Brandon Staley and brought in Joe Lombardi to replace Shane Steichen at the reins of the offense.

In impressive fashion, Maye led the Patriots into Buffalo last week and started the game by engineering two touchdown drives. In each of his last three games, Maye has posted a passer rating of at least 90.0. The Patriots will enter 2025 with a ton of salary-cap space and a top-five selection in the 2025 draft. They also picked up an additional third-round choice from Atlanta for Matt Judon.

New England certainly has plenty of opportunity to build around Maye.

For more information on the Patriots and Chargers, visit the New England and L.A. Chargers team pages at ProFootballPost.com.