Maye named AFC Offensive Player of the Week
Drake Maye took the Week 4 honor for his 269-yard, three-touchdown game at Buffalo. The Raiders, 3-1 and winners of the last three meetings, are next.
Maye named AFC Offensive Player of the Week
The bottom line: Drake Maye won AFC Offensive Player of the Week for his 269-yard, three-touchdown game in the 29-26 win at Buffalo, the second such award of his career. He hosts the Raiders on Sunday at Gillette Stadium, a 3-1 team that has beaten New England three straight times.
The award
The bottom line: The NFL announced Wednesday that Maye took the offensive honor for Week 4, alongside Jaguars linebacker Foyesade Oluokun on defense and Chiefs punter Matt Araiza on special teams.
The details:
- Maye completed 22 of 37 passes for 269 yards and three touchdowns and led the Patriots with 54 rushing yards on eight carries. Those 54 yards were the most by any AFC quarterback in Week 4, and he was the only AFC quarterback to throw three touchdown passes in a win, the league said.
- Trailing 26-21 with 4:27 to play, Maye drove the Patriots 73 yards on eight plays, completing 4 of 7 for 68 yards and finishing with the 23-yard touchdown to Efton Chism III with 1:50 left, the team said.
- It is Maye’s second Offensive Player of the Week award. The first came in Week 13 of 2025, after a 33-15 win against the Giants on Dec. 1.
- He is the fifth Patriots quarterback to win it more than once, joining Tom Brady, who won it 30 times, Drew Bledsoe with six, and Matt Cassel and Tony Eason with two each.
- The win made New England the first visiting team to beat Buffalo at the new Highmark Stadium, which opened this year.
What the award followed
The bottom line: Maye went into Buffalo with one touchdown pass and a league-high six interceptions, and the Patriots were averaging 12 points a game.
The details:
- New England scored 12 points a game over its first three games, down from nearly 29 a game last season, per Sports Illustrated. Maye, 24, threw for more than 4,800 total yards with 35 touchdowns in 2025 and finished as MVP runner-up.
- He had seven turnovers in the first three games and two more at Buffalo, an interception and a fumble.
- “Everybody understands how the quarterback has to perform in this league for teams to have success,” coach Mike Vrabel said Monday. “And everybody does have his back, starting with me and everybody all the way down.”
Next: a 3-1 Raiders team that keeps beating the Patriots
The bottom line: Las Vegas was picked as one of New England’s easier games when the schedule came out. It is 3-1, its best start since 2021, and it has won the last three meetings.
The details:
- The Raiders had the league’s worst record last season. The Patriots’ last win over them came in Week 3 of 2020, NBC Sports Boston noted. Las Vegas won 20-13 at New England in Week 1 of 2025, 21-17 in Week 6 of 2023 and 30-24 in Week 15 of 2022.
- Las Vegas scores 28.8 points a game, eighth in the league. New England scores 16.3, 30th. The Raiders lead the NFL with nine takeaways; the Patriots’ 10 giveaways are the most in the league, per Pats Pulpit.
- Tight end Brock Bowers has 16 catches for 202 yards and two touchdowns in the two weeks since returning from injury, and 12 of those 16 catches produced a first down.
- The Raiders run defense has allowed the sixth-most rushing yards per game and the second-most rushing yards per play. New England ran for 143 yards at Buffalo, 54 of them Maye’s.
- Maye was pressured a career-high 21 times against the Bills, per ESPN Insights, and the Patriots will again be without right guards Mike Onwenu and Greg Van Roten.
The case for caution about Las Vegas: The three teams the Raiders beat during their 3-0 start are a combined 1-8 this season once their games against Las Vegas are removed, and no team in the current playoff picture has a lower strength of victory than the Raiders’ .083. Las Vegas then lost 30-27 at home to Kansas City.
What Vrabel said about them: “The defense is very opportunistic. They hunt the football and they forced 10 fumbles, which is very impressive as a team. They’re disruptive and do a lot defensively, which says a lot to not only their scheme and the coaches, but the players for being able to handle as much as they do.”
Our take
The award is deserved! Three touchdowns, a career-high 21 pressures absorbed, and a 73-yard drive to win it on the road with the season looking like it was going to go belly up.
Maye should enjoy the celebration for a week. But one good Sunday doesn’t erase a 12-points-a-game start, and the thing that’s threatened to wreck the season is still here: New England has given the ball away 10 times, more than anyone, and Sunday’s opponent takes it away more than anyone. Maye coughed up two at Buffalo and won anyway (yes one was arguably not all his fault, but I don’t make the rules)
The Raiders have beaten the Patriots three straight. Three Raiders teams that were much worse than the one the Pats will see Sunday. Beat them, protect the ball, and the Buffalo game becomes the turning point instead of a blip (remember when Mac Jones beat the Bills with a go-ahead TD to Gesicki in his last year as a starter? It was supposed to be him getting back on track, but it most definitely wasn’t! Let’s hope the rest of this season doesn’t end like that one).