Matthew Stafford’s lackluster performance against the Atlanta Falcons on Monday Night Football has pushed the sophomore sensation from New England, Drake Maye, as the presumptive favorite for the 2025 MVP award. And everyone seems to be fighting the urge to compare him to another New England quarterback. Well, everyone except Colin Cowherd, that is.
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The former Tar Heel has powered the Patriots to a 13-3 record in his first year with Mike Vrabel. He is also leading the league in both completion percentage and passer rating.
Cowherd has officially given in to the hype surrounding Maye. Now that the Patriots are back to being in contention for the no. one seed in the AFC, Cowherd is ready to bring in Tom Brady while talking about Maye.
“Drake Maye is [Tom] Brady with a little mobility,” asserted Wright, before praising Maye’s consistency this season.
“Drake Maye is now going to win MVP, and I would argue he has been the most consistent quarterback in the league since Week 3,” Cowherd noted while speaking with Nick Wright.
“I don’t think it’s a crime,” Wright responded, seemingly agreeing with the notion that Maye is in fact the next big thing in New England.
“But I think what is happening to the NFL MVP over the last three seasons is a crime. A sports crime,” continued Wright.
“Because we do the MVP horse race starting in Week 4, what the MVP race has actually come down to is, everything up until December 1st is simply about determining who are the three or four quarterbacks eligible for the award… and then it’s as if it’s a whole new season, and amongst those players, MVP just becomes December player of the month,” he added.
Wright then cited the fact that Stafford recently threw for 457 passing yards and three touchdowns against the Seattle Seahawks, who have one of the better defenses in the league. His contention was that a poor performance in Week 17 shouldn’t automatically disqualify the 37-year-old veteran from the regular-season MVP race.
But the oddsmakers out in Las Vegas seem to think otherwise. After the Falcons became the winners on MNF, Maye’s MVP odds soared to -340 on FanDuel, making him the consensus favorite heading into the final week of the 2025 regular season.
Following the Patriots’ return to the practice facility on Monday, Vrabel informed the media that “Probably everybody that’s healthy will play,” and that presumably includes Maye. While that does allow for the possibility of Maye playing himself out of the award, that seems rather unlikely given the consistency that this offense has featured all season long.
Barring an absolute catastrophe, it looks as if Maye will be claiming the MVP award in the second season of his professional career. It’s a feat that, to this point, has only ever been accomplished by Lamar Jackson, Patrick Mahomes, Dan Marino, and Kurt Warner.
Of course, there’s only one quarterback that he’s chasing right now. So while the MVP award will make for a nice stamp on the resume, you can expect Maye to be much more focused on winning the Patriots another Super Bowl.
