For 15 seasons, Josh McDaniels got to work with one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time with the New England Patriots -Tom Brady.
It was McDaniels work with Brady that got him his first head coaching opportunity with the Denver Broncos (2009-10), and it was that plus the work with Mac Jones in his rookie season that got him his second head coaching job with the Las Vegas Raiders.
For the 2024 season, McDaniels is out of the league and enjoying time with his family. However, he's still watching the league and keeping a close eye on what's happening.
On a recent episode of Julian Edelman's podcast, "Games with Names," the former wide receiver asked McDaniels to evaluate New England's new rookie quarterback Drake Maye.
"I didn't get to see a ton of him in the spring, but he's obviously got great size. He's really athletic," McDaniel said. "I don't know where he'll fit in the whole style he plays with. I'm interested to see how that develops. Is he gonna be a little bit of a runner like Josh Allen was in Buffalo? I don't think he's quite as big as Josh is, but guys like that have those kind of attributes, you can use them to run the football too. I don't think we've seen all that yet in the preseason, but I'm interested to see when he plays if he becomes a little bit more of a dual-threat guy, or if he's just a pocket passer and a big, tall, strong guy in the pocket. The games I've seen, he's done a good job."
Maye's young and obviously playing in his first preseason games in the NFL, but he's clearly developing quite a bit.
"He's stepping up in the pocket, which, for a young guy, as you know, that's not always the easiest thing to get them to do, and I saw him multiple times last night move forward," McDaniel said. "I don't think he played from under center much. When there's exchange issues, usually that's just time on task. He didn't do that much in college from what I gather, so those are the kinds of things that will take some time for him to acclimate because you can't be thinking about how to get the ball from the center when you're dealing with defenses and where's the blitz coming from and what's my read and what coverage are they playing. You can't be thinking about how to get the ball."
Patriots head coach Jerod Mayo has already announced that Maye will be the backup to start the season while veteran Jacoby Brissett will be the team's starter.
Maye's time will come, but he's already showing some things that are impressing New England's former offensive coordinator.
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