Three Analysts Watched the Same Drake Maye Tape and Blamed Three Different Things
One touchdown, four interceptions. Dan Orlovsky starts with the playcalling, Adam Archuleta with a loss of confidence, and Mike Vrabel with the footwork.
Drake Maye has thrown one touchdown and four interceptions in two games, and the interesting thing about the reaction is not that it has been harsh. It is that three people paid to watch quarterbacks have looked at the same footage and put the weight in three different places. Orlovsky leads with the scheme around him, and allows that his confidence has gone with it. Archuleta puts it almost entirely on the confidence. His own head coach goes to his feet. They are not contradicting each other outright so much as disagreeing about which link in the chain broke first, which matters because the remedy is different in each case.
Useful next steps
The figures that ought to discipline the argument are narrow ones. Maye has completed 67.3 percent of his throws for 386 yards, across two defeats. A quarterback completing two thirds of his passes is not missing badly in general; something is going wrong specifically on the throws that carry risk. Working out which of the three theories explains that is the most useful thing a viewer can do with the next month of Patriots football.
He looks like a young man that's scared to make mistakes right now. And I think the playcalling is part of it. Unaggressive playcalling will create unaggressive play.— Dan Orlovsky, ESPN analyst, speaking on NFL Live (via Yahoo Sports, Sept 23)
Adam Archuleta, watching for CBS, located the problem inside the player rather than around him. "Where my concern lies is when I watch him on film I feel like I'm seeing a quarterback that is not as confident as he was a season ago," he said. "He's a little bit hesitant, and he's a little bit indecisive." He was specific about the coverage that is causing it, too: "it's that zone coverage where he's not quite seeing. You can tell at the top of his drop, he's just not trusting it." And he offered a cause that has nothing to do with either scheme or nerve - that Maye is missing A.J. Brown, who Archuleta says was his security blanket a year ago. Mike Vrabel, asked about the same throws, gave the least sympathetic answer of the three. He acknowledged "a few pressures," then went to technique: it came down to footwork, which he called "fundamentals of the position."
Same tape, three verdicts
1 touchdown, 4 interceptions, 67.3% completions, 386 yards across two games.
He is completing 67.3% of his throws for 386 yards — accuracy is not the problem, and the interceptions are.
Blames the scheme: "Unaggressive playcalling will create unaggressive play."
Blames confidence: "He's a little bit hesitant, and he's a little bit indecisive."
Blames technique, calling it "fundamentals of the position."
Two of the better defenses in the league in Seattle and Pittsburgh, and a quarterback without his most trusted target.
Set Orlovsky and Archuleta side by side and the difference is one of direction rather than of fact. Both see a hesitant quarterback. Orlovsky traces the hesitancy outward to the call sheet; Archuleta traces it inward to what Maye trusts when he reads coverage. Only one of those is fixable by a coordinator, which is why it matters which came first. Vrabel's answer is the one that is hardest to argue with and hardest to act on, since footwork is both genuinely fixable and the thing coaches say when they do not want to discuss anything else. There is a quieter case for patience underneath all of it: Maye's two opponents were Seattle and Pittsburgh, his most trusted receiver was unavailable to him, and New England won one of the two games everybody is using as evidence that he is broken. Two games against two good defenses is a thin place to build any conclusion at all.
Three people paid to watch quarterbacks looked at the same tape and disagreed completely. Whichever theory still stands when the supporting cast is whole is probably the correct one.
Three Theories, Tested
A young quarterback playing not to lose is a real and recognizable condition, and scheme is one of the few things a staff can change immediately.
He is completing two thirds of his throws, which is not the profile of a quarterback who has forgotten how to play - it points at decision-making rather than at the call sheet.
A fuller supporting cast. If the hesitation clears when his most trusted target is back, it was never the playcalling or the footwork.
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Sources: Yahoo Sports — Orlovsky points the blame on Drake Maye, Pro Football Network via Yahoo — Archuleta 'a bit concerned' about Maye