Maye Day: How Drake Maye's disastrous fourth quarter 'cost' Patriots their redemption game

Maye's impatience and bad decision-making helped unravel New England's lead against the defending Super Bowl champions Sep 10, 2026 at 11:06 am ET • 4 min read Through three quarters against the defending Super Bowl champions on the road, Drake Maye was playing fine. He wasn't creating explosive plays, but he was playing mistake-free football and taking what the stingy Dark Side Defense was giving him, and he had the Patriots holding a 10-3 lead. By the time the fourth quarter started, he was 17 of 22 for 127 yards and a touchdown, and he had yet to take a sack while he'd scrambled four times for 33 yards. He put the Patriots in position to win, driving them into range to extend their lead with a first-and-10 at Seattle's 46-yard line. And then disaster struck. Maye was intercepted on a deep ball on the second snap of the fourth quarter, and he was intercepted on each of New England's following two drives as well. He went 6 of 11 for just 53 yards and three interceptions, while also taking three sacks in the fourth quarter alone. It was an epic collapse, and it ended with a totally inexplicable and inexcusable pick on a play where Maye had almost no chance to complete the pass to Mack Hollins. If he had simply thrown the ball out of bounds, it would have given the Pats a chance to kick the game-tying field goal to send the game into overtime. "It was just unacceptable," Maye said, via the postgame interview transcript. "We had a chance to send it to overtime, at the worst, and the only thing you could do was turn the ball over, and that's what I did."The game-ender was the culmination of what had progressively been happening before it, though. After taking what the defense gave him for three quarters, Maye seemingly got bored and tried to test the Seahawks deep down the field. He threw into coverage that he shouldn't have tested three different times, and he came away with three picks. "I just stopped being patient. That was the big thing," Maye said. "We were really good up to the point where I tried to force one down the sideline to Romeo (Doubs). We were patient and dumping it off and trying to move the chains, and we avoided a lot of three-and-outs, and that was something. We try to earn more plays and the explosives will come, so I just stopped being patient and made decisions that ended up, like I said, cost us the game." On the throw to Doubs, which was into double coverage and ended up being picked off by Nehemiah Pritchett, Maye had his checkdown option (backup running back Corey Kiner) open in the flat. Instead, he elected to throw a pure jump ball down the field to a receiver who was covered. It was just a really bad decision, and he paid the price for it after Rodney Thomas tipped the ball into the air and it landed in Pritchett's arms. On the following drive, Maye actually made a really nice play to escape pressure to his right and find Doubs on a crossing route for what would have been a big gain, only to see Doubs lose his concentration and drop the pass. On the very next snap, though, Maye again lost patience and tried to hit Demario Douglas on a heavily-covered seam route, which Julian Love stepped in front of for the interception. It was another terrible decision in a situation where he had a checkdown option (Rhamondre Stevenson) open in the flat. And those two brutal interceptions were only the lead-up to the disaster class that was the game-ending pick, where Maye simply had zero chance of getting the ball to Hollins. He seemingly short-circuited and underthrew the ball by about five yards. Maye's decision-making, particularly on deep passes, was immaculate for almost all of last season. He was the best deep-ball thrower in the league, leading the NFL in EPA per play, according to Tru Media, while completing 35 of 70 passes for 1,093 yards and seven scores on throws of 20-plus air yards. He also threw just two interceptions on passes of more than 20 air yards all regular season. He threw one in the Super Bowl against the Seahawks, though, and he threw another two in the fourth quarter on Wednesday night alone—equaling his total from all of last year. It was a performance that is hard to spin in a remotely positive way. Sure, Maye was playing one of the best defenses in the NFL, but a) that defense was missing several key pieces of the secondary, including star nickel Nick Emmanwori; and b) the offensive line wasn't completely overwhelmed the way it was during the Super Bowl, where you could blame some of Maye's performance on the fact that he was under heavy duress the entire game. This was simply a case where Maye had the game in his hands and threw it away due to impatience and bad decision-making. That's really hard to stomach, especially for a player who finished second in MVP voting last year and looked like one of the leading candidates again heading into this season. Things might not get much easier for Maye moving forward. Superstar wide receiver A.J. Brown reportedly has a high ankle sprain that will presumably keep him out for several weeks. That leaves the Patriots with only Doubs, Douglas, Hollins, Kyle Williams and Efton Chism at wide receiver after they traded Kayshon Boutte to the Houston Texans late in training camp. That's not exactly a murderer's row of weapons, so there will be even more pressure on Maye to lift the supporting cast around him than there was in the opener. In short, it'll have to look a lot like last season if the Patriots want to meet expectations, and the opener wasn't an encouraging sign.