Drake Maye is getting the blame. Maybe he deserves some of it. But if you watched the Jacksonville film, you know the Patriots' offensive dysfunction runs so deep that pinning this disaster on the rookie quarterback is letting the real culprits off the hook.
Yes, Maye has issues on tape. Accuracy, decision-making, clock management — the stuff that gets picked apart on SportsCenter. But here's what matters: the play-calling is suspect, the personnel groupings are creating conflicts, and the scheme isn't doing anyone any favors. When your offense is this broken, you can't just fix it by cleaning up the QB's footwork. You need systemic change.
The good news? Mike Vrabel and Eliot Wolf inherited a mess, but they're not helpless. Gabe Jacas and Elijah Ponder showed flashes against Jacksonville that suggest there's actually talent on this roster worth building around. The problem is those guys aren't getting put in positions to succeed. When your coordinators' plans aren't working, scheme becomes prison.
This is the critical moment for the front office. Do they make the hard calls now — adjusting approach, rethinking personnel usage, maybe even getting more creative with alignment — or do they wait until Week 10 to panic-pivot? The film says don't wait. The Jacksonville game exposed that this isn't a quarterback problem masquerading as a systemic one. It's the reverse. Fix the scheme, and you might actually see what Maye can do. Keep running the same plays with the same groupings, and you'll get the same results. Worse, you'll waste another season wondering what could have been.
We're three weeks in. That's early enough to course-correct. Not so early that losses don't matter.