Patriots choose Jacoby Brissett as Week 1 starting QB over rookie Drake Maye

New England Patriots fans will have to wait to see Drake Maye start games.

Maye, the third overall pick of the NFL Draft, will sit and watch Jacoby Brissett, at least to start the season. In a team meeting Thursday morning, head coach Jerod Mayo named Brissett their Week 1 starter, according to NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport. The team announced the news a short time later. New England starts the season at the Cincinnati Bengals.

The decision was more complicated than picking the best quarterback. Patriots coach Jerod Mayo admitted Maye outplayed Brissett in the preseason. New England has resisted elevating Maye to QB1, likely because of a poor situation around the quarterback.

Brissett, the veteran, gets to start the season while Maye waits.

If it was a true competition, Maye might have won it. He was clearly the better player in the preseason.

Maye completed 21-of-32 passes in the preseason for 192 yards, 1 touchdown, no interceptions and a 86.9 passer rating. Brissett went 5 for 14 for 36 yards, no touchdowns, one interception and a 14.6 passer rating.

The Patriots’ plan since the NFL Draft was seemingly to start Brissett and protect Maye from being thrown right into the lineup, but the gap between them over the preseason was impossible to ignore.

“What I will say, this is a true competition, and I would say at this current point, Drake has outplayed Jacoby,” Mayo told WEEI one day after the final preseason game.

But the Patriots had to keep the big picture in mind. The Patriots have one of the NFL’s worst offensive lines. They don’t have a great receiving corps, though they did draft a couple of exciting young receivers. Many good quarterback prospects have been ruined by being thrown into bad situations. The Patriots obviously want to be careful with Maye’s development.

Brissett is entering his ninth season and has started 48 games. He’s not the permanent answer at quarterback, but New England hopes he looks better than he has in the…


Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/patriots-choose-jacoby-brissett-as-week-1-starting-qb-over-rookie-drake-maye-121255903.html

Author : Yahoo Sports

Publish date : 2024-08-29 12:12:55

Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source.