Gillette Stadium (Foxborough, Mass.) — Having just clinched a trip to the Super Bowl, Drake Maye waited for his turn to step up to the stage at Empower Field at Mile High in Denver. The New England Patriots quarterback finished off the Broncos in the AFC Championship Game in a white-out blizzard — and the snow kept coming.
Waiting for his cue to speak to the crowd and the TV audience, Maye seemed restless and, frankly, unwilling to go up on stage. You can see as much in the team’s mic’d-up video.
“Get the O-line up here, man,” Maye said. “I don’t want to be up here if nobody else is up here.”
Ask Maye about his success throwing the deep ball and he’ll credit his offensive line for giving him the time to throw. Ask Maye about the way the Patriots won the game — just about any game — and he’ll bring up his offensive line. Ask Maye who his best friends are on the team and he’ll probably list a few offensive linemen.
“When your peers notice the hard work that we put in every day — and obviously we don’t get acknowledged as much as most positions — it’s always a humbling experience,” tackle Morgan Moses told me in the Patriots’ locker room after practice last week. “It’s the type of guy our quarterback is. He’s never looking for the praise. He’s always looking to put it on somebody else.
“And that’s a form of a great leader, knowing that he didn’t get here by himself.”
Every quarterback is indebted to his offensive line. When the line plays well, the QB gets the credit. Maye is one of the top two candidates for the NFL MVP award this season, while there aren’t many people who know Moses’ name. But when the offensive line doesn’t play well, the linemen get endless criticism — as we saw last year in New England.
So that moment before Maye went on stage — and looked to defer the credit — felt significant.
“That’s who he is,” center Garrett Bradbury told me at practice. “I think the guys that know him know that no matter what his role is, no matter how popular he’s gonna get, the individual accolades he deserves — he doesn’t play for any of that stuff. He just wants to be one of the guys. He wants to win together as a team. … He doesn’t want the spotlight, which is cool, especially for that position.”
Drake Maye leads a huddle during the first quarter of the AFC Championship Game in Denver. (Photo by Lauren Leigh Bacho/Getty Images)
Sometimes, a quarterback’s relationship with his offensive line can feel inauthentic. There’s the expectation, for example, that every starting QB will buy expensive Christmas presents for his linemen. In Maye’s case, he bought saunas for his line.
“As offensive linemen, we live in that sauna,” Patriots guard Jared Wilson told me.
But Maye has gone above and beyond what quarterbacks normally do for the line. Take, for example, last spring when the veteran Bradbury moved in with the second-year QB.
Bradbury had just been released by the Minnesota Vikings after six seasons, and his family had relocated to Charlotte temporarily. His wife was due in June with their second daughter. And as Bradbury noted, “It’s not cheap to live up here.” So, rather than find a short-term lease or buy a home, the 30-year-old Bradbury crashed with the 23-year-old Maye.
They were familiar with one another because Bradbury’s brother-in-law played baseball with Maye’s brother, Cole, at Florida. But they truly got to know each other in the spring, when they spent most of their time watching basketball.
“It felt like going back to college — having a roommate,” Bradbury said. “He was a great roommate. He can sleep on command, which is pretty impressive. He’d come home from a long day [of OTAs or minicamp] and just pass out on the couch.”
(For what it’s worth, Mike Vrabel opened his home to fellow teammates when he played for the Patriots and to fellow coaches more recently. It’s one of the many ways Vrabel and Maye are alike.)
Maye celebrates with former roommate Garrett Bradbury after a touchdown against the Texans in the AFC divisional round. (Photo by Winslow Townson/Getty Images)
There are small gestures, too, which Maye probably doesn’t even realize he’s doing. But after the Patriots beat the Chargers in the wild-card round, Maye hung out at his locker chatting with teammates, reporters and, perhaps most importantly, Moses’ three sons. They told the QB that they have his rookie card, and it seemed pretty clear that it’s one of their prized possessions.
If you want a sense of how important fatherhood is to Moses, just look at what he did immediately after winning the AFC Championship Game — he called his three boys. So it was special to see Maye spending some time with an offensive lineman’s kids in the locker room.
“I talk about my boys all the time, so a lot of the guys in here know what my boys mean to me,” Moses told me in the locker room. “We spend a lot of time away from our families to be able to play this game. Guys noticed that, and when you have somebody like Drake and [lineman] Will [Campbell] that take the time out to make them feel welcome and feel like family, it’s a great outcome.”
Maye’s bond with his offensive line is real. It’s a part of the team’s DNA. And it’s really not that big of a deal, in a way, because Maye makes an effort to be tight with everyone on the team, from his receivers to his O-line to his defense.
But when it comes to the guys who have changed Maye’s career trajectory, his line ranks high on the list.
“I definitely say culturally, for sure, there’s been some change,” veteran tackle Vederian Lowe said when asked about the difference this season in New England. “They brought in some great new guys. … I think that the combination of all those things — along with Coach Vrabel establishing an identity for us to abide by every single day. That really helped turn around our unit.”
The line has had its ups and downs, including the biggest name, first-round left tackle Campbell, who during the playoffs allowed five pressures against the Chargers and four more against the Texans (including two sacks). But he followed that performance with a zero-sack, two-pressure outing on Maye’s 29 dropbacks in the AFC title game.
For all the times Maye has gone out of his way to take care of his line, it was Campbell who went over to the QB before New England’s game-winning drive against the Broncos.
“I hope you know how much I love you,” Campbell said to Maye on the field.
That seems to be what matters most to Maye. Not the spotlight. Not the attention. Not the awards. It’s the relationships he’s built — and the desire to deliver a Super Bowl to his guys.
And moments after Campbell spoke to Maye, the QB did just that. He ran for a first down to end the AFC Championship Game and give his guys a shot at the Lombardi Trophy.
In Game Changers, we offer the playbook on the characters you need to know, on the field and off.
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