FOXBOROUGH - During his Wednesday afternoon press conference, Mike Vrabel didn’t want to relitigate Drake Maye’s performance in Sunday’s win over the Steelers. At least not to start.
“These are questions that I would like to answer on Monday,” he said, gruffly. “I think I was willing to do that. The focus has got to be on Jacksonville and our performance…”
For him and his team, yes. For what some of us in the media do for a living, no. Vrabel knows that. That is why he eventually answered the question: did the pendulum swing too far from Maye being overly aggressive and reckless to end Week 1 in Seattle, to passing up makeable throws against Pittsburgh (he twice had Kyle Williams with potential hole shots vs. cover two but decided against making them).
“It's being decisive,” Vrabel continued. “It's in everyone's play, but it's certainly magnified with the quarterback. And so being decisive, believing in what you see, again, that's what we ask all our players to do: prepare to try to play fast and aggressive, make great decisions.
“And so, yeah, we could always say, "Man, we should have let that one rip, or we got to use a better decision. Ultimately, it's his responsibility to be able to distribute the football as quickly and decisively as possible in the places that it's supposed to go, and continue not to force things, and try to create an ‘X’ play on every single play.”
Despite the changing media narrative over the last 36 hours or so regarding Maye’s performance - yes, he wasn’t terrible on Sunday, but can we stop with the “it wasn’t that bad” nonsense? That’s how we’re going to judge the MVP runner-up? “Not that bad?” Give me a break. Maye did not play well. Vrabel told you as much both postgame (when he’s at his most emotional, and therefore most honest) and again on Monday (when he’s more tempered). There are reasons for Maye’s struggles, and there are excuses. I don’t want to hear the latter.
As for the former - and I’ve written it multiple times but will do so again - teams have a