Following Matthew Stafford’s lackluster performance against the Atlanta Falcons on Monday Night Football, the sophomore sensation from New England, Drake Maye, looks to be the presumptive favorite for the 2025 MVP award. The former Tar Heel has gotten the Patriots off to a 13-3 start in his first year with Mike Vrabel, and with him also leading the league in both completion percentage and passer rating as well, everyone seems to be fighting the urge to compare him to another New England quarterback.
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Well, everyone except for Colin Cowherd that is. The Fox Sports figurehead has officially given into the hype surrounding Maye, and now that the Patriots are back to being in contention for the no. one seed in the AFC, he’s ready to assert that “Drake Maye is [Tom] Brady with a little mobility.”
“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.”
“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.”
Citing the fact that Matthew Stafford recently threw for 457 passing yards and three touchdowns against one of the better defenses in the league in the Seattle Seahawks, Wright ultimately suggests that a poor performance in Week 17 shouldn’t automatically disqualify the 37-year-old veteran from the regular season MVP race.
Unfortunately, for both Wright and Stafford, the oddsmakers out in Las Vegas seem to think otherwise. After the Falcons were officially declared 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 aforementioned 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, 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 the possibility of winning the Patriots another Super Bowl.
