Also, why should Packers fans care?
Early on in the run-up to the 2024 NFL Draft, Drake Maye was the consensus second-best quarterback in this year’s class, with a substantial number of analysts putting him above Caleb Williams. Maye’s ceiling is high and so there are still a few who have him on that tier, but for the most part, he’s seen his stock start to sink.
Although he’s still often the second quarterback off the board, it’s no longer quite so unanimous. So what exactly is going on here? Let’s take a look.
Drake Maye, North Carolina
2023 Stats: 269/425 (63.3%), 3608 yards, 24 TDs, 9 INTs
QBOPS: .373/.657/.1.031. QWOBA+: 112
You can see Maye’s overall QWOBA+ ranking here, and his Draft Sheet stats here. Any questions about QBOPS/QWOBA? Check the glossary!
Maye is in some ways a throwback. NFL front offices and coaching staffs alike have long preferred big, tall, strong-armed passers, and Maye is all of those things. There are very few scouts who will look at Maye’s tape and not exclaim “that guy’s a quarterback.” Maye’s arm is an easy 70 on the 20-80 scale, his highlight reel is full of impressive playmaking, and this will be his age 22 season, making him one of the youngest quarterbacks available. So, what’s the problem?
I’ve touched on Maye a bit before in this post, but the short answer is that despite all of the high-ceiling traits Maye has, he also has the single biggest red flag a quarterback can have: poor accuracy. There are many excuses for Maye, as there are for all quarterbacks who struggle with completion percentage, but the bottom line is that in 2023, for quarterbacks with at least 250 attempts, Maye finished 65th in completion percentage. Notre Dame’s Sam Hartman finished just ahead of Maye, while Central Florida’s John Rhys Plumlee finished just behind.
We will get to the excuses in a moment, but the first is always that Maye had poor receivers compared to his peers. This is true in 2023, where Maye’s average completion found a receiver with a 66 PFF grade (about FBS average). However, out of the 15 draft eligible quarterbacks I’ve tracked on my QBOPS draft sheet this year, only Wisconsin’s Tanner Mordecai threw to worse receivers (62.69).
The problem with this excuse is that this was not Maye’s only season as a starter. In 2022, Maye’s receivers (primarily Josh Downs, now of the Colts, and Antoine Green, now of the Lions) were excellent, ranking 8th overall in WRGPC at 71.82. Despite the outstanding receiving corps he enjoyed two years ago, Maye could only manage a marginally better 66.2% completion percentage, which ranked 31st, and while he was within striking distance of CJ Stroud (29th) and Caleb Williams (27th), he wasn’t doing as much damage as either of them overall, as Stroud and Williams averaged over 9 yards per attempt while Maye settled at 8.36. I adjust for receiver quality, and once you do, his “better” 2022 season actually slightly worse as he finished with a 108 QWOBA+ in 2022 against a 112 this season.
The bottom line is that to succeed at the next level, Maye will need to iron out some of the flaws with his mechanics. He gets happy feet, he fades away from pressure too much, and while his arm is fantastic, he trusts it more than he should. More than anything, Maye needs to land on a team that realizes he still needs to undergo some development. But that’s enough of the bad, let’s get to the good.
Even though I like JJ McCarthy more than most and even though JJ was a far more accurate college quarterback, I would still take Maye over him. I think his accuracy absolutely can be fixed by the right organization, and there is plenty of good stuff to work with here. Of the draftable quarterbacks, Maye had the highest average depth of target (aDOT) in the class (11), and barely benefitted from screen passes at all. His 1,452 deep yards are second in the class to Michael Penix, who was working with a few of the best college deep threats you will ever see. Maye is also the second-youngest quarterback in this class to McCarthy, and comparing his last two seasons as a 20/21-year-old to, for instance, Jayden Daniels’ last two seasons as a 22/23-year-old is also a bit unfair. Age is a huge factor for quarterbacks, and many of Maye’s issues simply reflect his relative lack of experience.
Despite throwing down the field more than almost everyone else and posting a robust 7.5% Big Time Throw Rate, PFF actually saw him as more careful than McCarthy with a 10% Turnover Worthy Play rate. It’s worth keeping this in mind because Maye’s actual turnover rate was quite high, and in my humble opinion, seemed to directly reflect the amount of pressure he faced. Finally, his receivers did him dirty with an 8.2% drop rate. Only Jack Plummer, Jordan Travis, and Joe Milton suffered from more drops.
There is one other concern worth mentioning. Maye’s pressure to sack ratio of 19.5% isn’t quite high enough to be truly concerning, but it’s also not ideal. Maye is definitely a big game hunter and will hold the ball in hopes of a big play, and his efficiency would increase greatly if he took what the defense was giving him more frequently. This issue is compounded by a propensity for turnovers when under pressure. Maye plays a strikingly clean game when kept upright, but his pressured throws become disasters far too often.
None of this should be terribly surprising. There is, after all, a good reason why Williams is considered the no-doubt first pick over Maye, as Williams was among the most accurate quarterbacks over the last two seasons. You simply don’t need to rely on projectability as much as you do with Maye, and with projectability comes risk. I think if Maye landed on the Bears, it would be a complete and utter disaster. Should he find his way to a better organization (like Minnesota), he could easily turn into the best quarterback in the class.
Here’s hoping that doesn’t happen.
You must be logged in to post a comment Login