Is Drake Maye playing like a top-5 NFL QB?
Yahoo Sports NFL analyst Nate Tice and NFL writer Charles McDonald react to New England’s 25-19 win over New Orleans and why the second-year quarterback is showing signs of being among the league’s best signal callers. Check out the full conversation on “Football 301” - and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you listen.
Video Transcript
Man, uh, after the game, I don't remember someone on the CBS broadcast, uh, or, or, you know, whichever company was broadcasting today, they said Drake May is playing like a top five quarterback this season and it's kind of hard to dispute, you know.
Um, and I guess if you're, if you're not willing to say that, you could say, oh, you know, he hasn't had the toughest list of defenses that he's played against this season, but it ain't like the Patriots have the Avengers out there or a whole bunch of like star players around Drake May, you know, like this is, uh, uh, we were even talking about today, like they still kind of call offense sometimes like they have a better offensive line than they do, um.
Uh, and the receivers have been shaky, like you're relying on Keyshawn Boy, uh, to kind of finally live up to this form of himself that was, uh, rumored to us like six or seven years ago before he got to LSU, uh, and a lot of that just comes back to this kind of supernova you drafted last year, uh, in Drake, man.
I just think it's cool to see.
Uh, just him take control of everything around him each week and you're starting to see like the athleticism and the playmaking, uh, start to pair with experience and it's cool.
The first touchdown to Pop Douglas is like why I'm again excited about Mays because the deep ball ability, you know, his ability to create explosive plays with his arm and legs.
And so that's what was funny about the first couple of weeks was that it was all underneath he was acting like old school Drew Brees, and then now today you've got to see some of the big plays, the creation plays.
Um, yeah, Buteis is playing really well.
I just really like him, like just nice, good hands, ball skills at the catch point, like boxing guys out, um, like the two touchdown throws where it's great connection.
I thought they were both good throws with good plays by the receiver as well.
Uh, they're so sloppy on offense, like you just say it's not like the Avengers, it's the Thunderbolts out there.
It's the Suicide Squad.
It's some, there's some like Bradbury had a snap that was.
I mean, it was wider than any of May's throws today.
Like it was, I've seen pitch outs in baseball that were closer than that.
That snap on 4th down that he had, uh, and I think maybe you just summed it up like where May feels like, you know, you said top 5 and I know I'm a big fan, so I'm just trying to like avoid having any of these big, big takes that kind of get, you know, blown up my face.
But at the very least, the top 8, top 10 guy right now, like at the very least, um, he's #1 success rate right now.
Uh, he's top 5 in EPA per play and EPA per dropback.
So it's like, OK, the underlying stats are pointing at this too.