FOXBOROUGH — After a rough performance in the Week 1 loss to the Raiders, there was a lot of negativity about the offense of Josh McDaniels and his ability to work with an athletic quarterback like Drake Maye.
After four weeks and a 42-13 thrashing of the Panthers on Sunday, that storyline has gone away rather quickly.
Dating back to 2001, the first Super Bowl season, the Patriots' offensive success rate through four games (45.4) is the 11th-highest in 25 seasons, and best since 2020 (tops: 2007, of course, 57.9).
Even better news: the Patriots' successful pass play rate (53.9%) is the fifth-best mark through four games in the past 25 years (2007 again, 66.9%).
This three-game stretch, in terms of passing success rate (63, 55.3 and 59.1), is the best since 2020 - the last time McDaniels coordinated this offense.
Safe to say at this point that the marriage between Maye and McDaniels is going pretty well, and they've only played a month.
"It’s each and every week in this offense," Maye said, when asked about his comfort level in the scheme. "I think there’s still stuff on the tape that (McDaniels) will get on me on, and I think that’s the best thing to do is with a loss, you kind of learn from it and take it to heart. Also, when you win, look at the tape and learn from it. There’s things that are going to show up in this game that matter down the road. Yeah, getting more and more comfortable. I think those guys around me are helping me out."
(Adam Richins for BSJ)
Maye looks more and more comfortable by the week with what he is doing. For the second time in two starts, he was basically flawless again. Maye, who rushed for a touchdown, completed 14 of 17 passes (82.4%) for 203 yards and two passing touchdowns to post his career-best passer rating, 155.6. His previous best was Week 2 against Miami (137.3).
"He had a hell of a day," said Stefon Diggs, who had his breakout Patriots performance (6 for 101). "He's a good quarterback. He's starting to come along. As you can see, he looks sharp out there. I'm just excited for the future, and just want to keep building."
Since 2001, the Patriots have played 97 games in the first four weeks of the season (three seasons only had three games). The rankings for the last three weeks in terms of successful pass play rate:
6th (tie) at Miami 63.3
13th (tie) vs. Carolina 59.1
25th vs Pittsburgh 55.3
At the conclusion of the 4 p.m. games, the Patriots led the league in explosive play rate and explosive pass play rate. The Patriots' explosive pass play rate of 31.6% was the second-highest in a Patriots game during the first four weeks dating back to Tom Brady's first season as a starter. The 2013 game against Atlanta (32.3%) was the only one better.
Safe to say Mike Vrabel won't be grumbling about the lack of explosive plays this week.
"We knew their corners were good players," said Maye. "They’ve got a good cornerback duo, and they try to match for outs, so just try to get our guys running away from them and give them some misdirection looks on different run game stuff. I thought our guys executed well and kept on moving and kept going. I felt like it was good not to have 15- to 17-play drives. It felt good to kind of get some lower play drives and end up in the end zone."
How did the Patriots become so explosive?
Start with the quarterback being highly accurate (only seemed to have two bad passes). But also give credit to McDaniels for chalking up a varied gameplan that kept the Panthers spinning.
Coming in, this was the best defense - especially against the pass - the Patriots had seen all season. A big factor, it seemed, in McDaniels' gameplan was the situation at edge rusher for the Panthers. They lost two veterans, Pat Jones and DJ Wonnum, heading into this game. The Panthers had to start two rookies, Nic Scourton and Princely Umanmielen, on the edge, with not much backing them up (Boogie Basham had to be called up from the practice squad). McDaniels exploited that misdirection runs, end arounds, screens and playaction bootlegs. By the end of the game, of the Patriots' 18 dropbacks, only nine were conventional dropbacks. Everything else had some sort of movement or deception as part of it.
"I thought those guys, we established the run early, we had some different scheme kind of plays that kind of gave the defense some misdirection that I thought we hit right on the head and turned into explosive plays," said Maye. "Just proud of the guys. Just kept on fighting. I thought we were good in situational. I should have hit (Kayshon Boutte) on the first third down and missed behind him, so could have been even better. There’s still stuff to work on."
Of course, the question will be ... can they do this every week? The answer is it depends on the opponent, which is why the Patriots are a gameplan team. This sort of horizontal game worked this week, but do you want to use it in Buffalo against Joey Bosa, Greg Rousseau and AJ Epenesa? Probably not, but who knows?
It certainly helped the Patriots backs all averaged over 4.2 yards per carry.
Diggs being a focal point seemed to help as well, has he was the only weapon with over three targets. Everyone will say this was because he saw more time in the slot. That, in fact, is not what happened. According to PFF, Diggs was in the slot on 41.9% of his snaps. That's his lowest number since Week 1 (27.5%). He was at 48.4% against Miami and 56.4% against the Steelers.
Wherever he was lined up, Douglas was making big and important plays. Maye hits Diggs on a 33-yarder, a 22-yarder on 3rd and 15, and for 30 yards on 4th and 3.
"He looked a little faster than I thought. He looked pretty fast," Maye said. "I think he’s just going to keep getting more comfortable. Shoot, he’s a great player with the ball in his hands. He’s a great leader on this team. He’s great with the energy, being positive, and glad he’s a Patriot."
Diggs said he's not even totally comfortable in the offense yet.
"Five out of 10," said Diggs. "Obviously, having success, it's week to week. I'm saying it's been a slow ramp up or build up that I didn't even notice through these past four weeks. So coming out of the first quarter of the season 2 and 2 is not bad. Could it be better? Yes. ... I still got to study, I still got to flip the pages, I still got to grind."
What did change was Pop Douglas' usage. He played a season-low 8 snaps after 29 against the Steelers.
Sure seems like McDaniels and Maye are relying more on players who they can count on to execute the offense, as Maye seems to be surrounded by more veterans like Hunter Henry (a 31-yard touchdown on a ridiculous throw on the move by Maye), Austin Hooper (24-yard screen), Diggs (three explosive plays) and Mack Hollins (4-yard touchdown reception).
Whatever the mix, it's working. Looks like Maye and McDaniels are cooking a bit. What a change from Week 1.