FOXBOROUGH – A year ago, damn near every team-produced social media clip had a miked-up Mike Vrabel exhorting his young quarterback, Drake Maye, to talk more, lead more, celebrate more. It seemed counter to Maye’s personality. He isn’t the loudest guy on the field by a long shot, and there were plenty of practices where you never heard him.
In many ways, Maye’s the polar opposite of Tom Brady (even in the early days), at the end-of-the-line Cam Newton, and even Mac Jones, whose high-pitched screeches could be heard the next town over. But Vrabel’s directive from a season ago remains very much in the forefront for the third-year pro, even if it’s not entirely natural.
“It has to,” Maye said when I asked. “I think for me, I think the biggest thing I kept on saying last year was like, ‘I feel like I need to do something in this league before I start….’ And they kept on pushing me, said, ‘You gotta expect that to happen.’“
That point, about doing something in this league, should no longer be a concern. Judging from the way I’ve observed Maye operate this spring and now on day one of training camp, he feels that way too. No, that’s not to say he thinks he’s got the NFL figured out, but the 23-year-old (he’ll be 24 at the end of August) has a damn good foundation on his resume, and his teammates look at Maye and realize that as he goes, so do we (mostly).
“I definitely got some more comfort in that area of pushing the guys and thinking I need to do it more and celebrating and be louder and show my personality more,” Maye said. “I think the guys will see that naturally. So I think that’s what camp’s for, and you build through it, and you kind of get to new levels. And that’s the best thing about spending every day, all day with each other.”
That interaction isn’t just what happens between the lines. It was post-practice, watching how easily he moved between
