Having won two Super Bowls with Tom Brady himself, it’s safe to say that Asante Samuel knows the GOAT’s traits a bit better than most. And following the Patriots’ 28-24 prime-time win over the Baltimore Ravens, the former DB now believes that he’s seeing something similar with Drake Maye.
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The sophomore sensation has completed 59 passes of 20+ yards throughout his 15 starts this season, second only to Matthew Stafford, who has completed 64. Maye’s chemistry with his wide receivers, Stefon Diggs and Kayshon Boutte, has developed rather quickly. And that’s helped to make the Patriots’ offense one of the more potent ones in the league.
Going as far as to label the Tar Heel product as “Baby Tom Brady,” the four-time Pro Bowler recently explained that:
“Drake Maye went off in the first half… Not only did he go crazy in the fourth quarter to make sure his team got the victory, Drake Maye had over 170 yards passing in the first half of this game… Baby Brady, that’s what we’re going to call him. I gotta give it to Drake Maye, Baby Brady, man. He throws the prettiest deep ball out of anyone in the NFL right now.”
New England has scored the sixth most points of any team this season, and according to Samuel, that’s largely a result of Maye’s ability to place the football “exactly where it needs to be for a wide receiver to make a good catch.”
“He throws his deep passes better than he does his intermediate, short passes, and that’s so backwards, but he’s getting it done,” Samuel joked on his podcast. “Whatever works, man, he’s getting it done.”
“This is Josh McDaniels and Tom Brady all over again. Even though Tom Brady started with Steve Walsh, once Josh McDaniels got his hands on him, he helped develop Brady into a six-time Super Bowl champion, a record-breaking quarterback who could play at an elite level for years upon years. And that’s what we’re going to see out of Drake Maye.”
New England now finds itself tied with the Denver Broncos and the Seattle Seahawks for the honor of having the best record in the NFL as we approach the last two weeks of the season. And with the only remaining matchups on the Patriots’ schedule being against the lowly New York Jets and an imploding Miami Dolphins team, they figure to have a pretty good chance at finishing their 2025 campaign with a 14-3 record.
In addition to securing a bid for the number-one seed in the playoffs, a finish of that magnitude could also spur them towards what many AFC fans had thought they’d seen the last of after following the departures of Brady and Bill Belichick: the return of the New England Patriots to the championship stage.
