What changed: inside the Patriots' two-week offensive turnaround
Drake Maye has gone from 28th in EPA per drop-back to first. The bigger change is that Josh McDaniels started showing defenses a different picture before the snap.
What changed: inside the Patriots’ two-week offensive turnaround
The bottom line: Through three games the Patriots scored 12 points a game and ranked last in the NFL in points per possession and red zone efficiency. In the two games since, Drake Maye has thrown for 643 yards and seven touchdowns with one interception, and New England has scored 29 and 45. The change is not only Maye. Josh McDaniels began dressing up the same plays differently.
Maye’s numbers have gone from near the bottom to the top
The bottom line: By every efficiency measure Patriots.com charted, Maye has gone from a bottom-third quarterback over the first three games to a top-two one over the last two.
| Drake Maye | First three games (NFL rank) | Last two games (NFL rank) |
|---|---|---|
| EPA per drop-back | -0.07 (28th) | +0.52 (1st) |
| Success rate | 46.8% (19th) | 58.7% (1st) |
| CPOE | +2.8 (18th) | +11.0% (2nd) |
| Big-time throw rate | 2.4% (27th) | 10.1% (2nd) |
Source: Evan Lazar, Patriots.com. EPA is expected points added, a measure of how much each play improves a team’s scoring position. CPOE is completion percentage over expectation. A big-time throw is a charting term for a high-difficulty, high-value pass.
The details:
- Maye has completed 48 of 71 passes for 643 yards with seven touchdowns and one interception over the two games, WEEI noted. It is the most he has thrown for in any two-game span of his career, and the first time he has thrown at least three touchdowns in back-to-back games.
- Against the Raiders he posted the highest single-game expected points added of any quarterback this season at plus-28.7, and the third-highest EPA per drop-back at plus-0.76.
- It was his first game without a turnover-worthy play by Lazar’s charting since Week 17 of 2025, a span of nine games, and his four negative plays were his fewest since Week 18 of 2025.
- He went into Week 4 with one touchdown pass and six interceptions, a year after finishing as MVP runner-up.
McDaniels started disguising the same plays
The bottom line: The Patriots ranked 32nd in pre-snap motion and 29th in play-action through three games. Both jumped sharply in Week 4.
The details:
- New England used pre-snap motion on 75.3% of its offensive snaps against Buffalo, a 21.3-point increase on the first three games and its highest rate since Week 15 of 2023, Andrew Guindon wrote for Yahoo Sports.
- Play-action rose 15 points to 35.7% of plays. The first touchdown came off it: Maye faked a screen to DeMario Douglas, simulated a handoff to Rhamondre Stevenson and found Romeo Doubs on a skinny post against a five-man blitz.
- The run game moved with it. New England’s rushing success rate had been last in the league at 28.4% and rose to 44.8% against the Bills.
- Against the Raiders, Lazar charted the Patriots motioning receivers into the passing strength to build three- and four-receiver sides and a “double” sidecar formation. The concepts after the snap were the same ones; the pictures the defense saw before it were not.
- McDaniels has said the Patriots are running the same plays they ran in the first three games, and that he treats the start of a season as building a foundation.
The Raiders left their corners alone, and New England was ready
The bottom line: Las Vegas played single-high coverage on 55.3% of snaps and gave Maye four one-on-one deep shots from the pocket.
The details:
- The Raiders came in with the league’s highest cover zero rate at 10.3%, meaning no deep safety help at all. They used it twice. One of those was the 49-yard completion to Kyle Williams, with New England in a split-back formation to keep Maye clean.
- “That was the look we were waiting for,” Williams said. “They didn’t give it to us early. They ended up giving it to us later. Something we just had to take advantage of, and when I saw it, I knew (the ball) was coming.”
- Kansas City had already punished that approach a week earlier, hitting three deep balls on the Raiders, two of them against cover zero, Lazar noted.
- Lazar expects defenses to adjust by putting safeties over the top of the outside receivers and forcing Maye to work between the numbers.
The line held up without its left tackle
The bottom line: McDaniels game-planned around Maxx Crosby, and the protection survived losing Will Campbell in the second quarter.
The details:
- New England ran away from Crosby, called boot action to the opposite side and chipped him with a tight end before he reached the tackle, Mike Giardi reported. Morgan Moses took 23 pass-blocking snaps against him.
- Crosby finished with one assisted tackle and no sacks. Las Vegas was credited with half a sack as a team.
- At the other end of it, Kirk Cousins was pressured on 48.4% of his drop-backs and sacked three times, the Raiders’ own site noted, calling the game “a dismantling at the line of scrimmage.”
- The Patriots scored touchdowns on four of their first six drives and five of eight.
The receivers behind the receivers
The bottom line: New England dressed four wide receivers against the Raiders, without A.J. Brown or Mack Hollins, and all of them produced.
The details:
- Douglas caught two touchdowns. Williams had a team-high 91 yards and his first touchdown of the season. Efton Chism III was targeted a team-high six times and caught five for 57 yards, Sports Illustrated reported.
- “They’re all ready to go. They all played different positions. That’s not easy, you know, to learn three different positions and being able to step in there and block and make plays,” Mike Vrabel said.
- The 45 points were the most the Patriots have scored in a game with Maye as their starter.
What the coach says changed
The bottom line: Vrabel declined to name a single cause.
- “I don’t even know how to begin to answer that question, because I think it’s not fair to anybody,” he said on WEEI’s Greg Hill Show when asked whether Maye’s early struggles were physical or mental. “When you look at player performance, we have to give guys everything that they need during the week, [in] training camp to be prepared situationally.”
- “And I always say this, a guy may not have to tell me that he doesn’t love a certain coverage, or that he doesn’t love a certain route, or that he doesn’t love a certain play call. You kind of see it in their actions, the way that they play, and the speed at which they play.”
- The players pointed at the practice week. “The last two weeks of practice we’ve had, to be honest with you,” Stevenson said. “The attention to detail - we come in locked in, ready to work and reap the rewards on Sunday.”
- “It’s really an example of practice execution showing up in the game,” Maye said.
Our take
Was this Maye rediscovering his form, or McDaniels changing the plan? Both, and the scheme half is the part you can actually point at.
Maye looks like the MVP version of himself on a much more consistent basis. But he looked like himself in stretches of September too, and the offense still ranked last in the league at turning drives into points. What’s new is that McDaniels stopped showing defenses the same picture every snap. Thirty-second in motion to 75% of snaps in one week is a call sheet changing as much as anything to do with individual players. McDaniels’ adjustments are having a serious impact.
The caution is in Lazar’s last line. Las Vegas played single-high on more than half its snaps and left corners on islands, and Kansas City had already shown everyone what that costs. The next defense, if they’re smart, won’t make the same mistakes. When somebody drops two safeties and makes Maye work the middle of the field, we’ll find out which half of this was real.
Two games, 29 points and then 45, and a quarterback playing like the MVP runner-up again. The Pats have been fun again. I’m not ready to say they’re fully back, but two great showings in a row is absolutely the right direction. I am already giddy to watch this offense hand the Jets a classic beatdown.