Drake Maye Will Deliver A Top-5 QB Fantasy Football Season Again
Fantasy

Drake Maye Will Deliver A Top-5 QB Fantasy Football Season Again

Ian Hartitz projects how QB Drake Maye will fare for fantasy football after his breakout season last year.

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There's no sneaking up on the league for Drake Maye this year. After hearing about how his stats got fat against a last-place schedule before facing a true crucible of a postseason set of stellar defenses, Maye gets a follow-up act to his breakout season that will show just how good he is in his third year as a starter. He'll have a high bar to meet, but it's hard to have anyone bet against him being a top-5 fantasy quarterback again. Ian Hartitz breaks it down as part of his New England Patriots Team Preview.

Can Drake Maye get even better in Year 3?

The league better look the f*ck out if he does. Nobody, including MVP Matthew Stafford, was more efficient through the air than the Patriots' 23-year-old franchise QB.

Drake Maye among 34 QBs with 300 dropbacks in 2025:

  • EPA per dropback: +0.31 (1st)
  • Completion percentage: 72% (1st)
  • Completion percentage over expected: +10.8% (1st)
  • Explosive pass rate: 18.4% (1st)
  • Yards per attempt: 8.9 (1st)
  • QBR: 77.1 (1st)
  • Passer rating: 113.5 (1st)

The former No. 3 overall pick also continued to be quite lethal on the ground, chipping in 450 rushing yards (4th among QBs) and 4 scores.

Of course, those stats fell off a bit in the playoffs. It was never going to look too pretty in consecutive matchups against the Chargers (9th in scoring defense), Texans (2nd), Broncos (3rd) and Seahawks (1st), but it was impossible to ignore the steep declines in things like completion rate (-13.7%) and yards per attempt (-2). Additionally, the only real major regular-season flaw, Maye's tendency to take a lot of sacks under pressure, was REALLY accentuated: His 20.6% pressure-to-sack rate was the league's eighth-highest mark in the regular season, and this ballooned up to a brutal 37.5% mark during the playoffs.

Good news: The aforementioned additions at receiver and offensive line add a lot of credence to the idea that this will be a better overall offensive environment in 2026. After all, Maye was pressured on 38% of his dropbacks (7th), and it's reasonable to believe that defenses will be a bit more fearful of this new A.J. Brown-led receiver core.

It'd make sense if some of Maye's numbers regress—it's hard for anyone to be that freaking good two years in a row—but the other possibility here is that the Patriots' first-place schedule produces more back-and-forth game script and overall passing volume. New England threw the 10th fewest passes in the NFL last season despite having a +3% dropback rate over expected—the fifth-highest mark in the league!

Maye is ranked as high as QB2 and as low as QB6 from Fantasy Life's crew of alleged expert rankers. Early Underdog ADP also reflects the close nature of this tier: Five QBs have an ADP within 8 overall picks of one another in Round 6. Maye is fully deserving of this placement after ripping off an overall QB2 finish last season—the list of QBs to register a 20+-point fantasy season within their first two seasons is littered with longtime fantasy stars.

Also note: Tommy DeVito is the backup here. Anyone else a bit underwhelmed by that? Sure, the "Hey look, everyone, the Giants' QB is Italian" gimmick was a fun time, but he's also the fifth-worst quarterback in EPA per dropback since 2023. Old friends Joshua Dobbs and Jimmy Garoppolo are free agents! Just saying!

Players Mentioned in this Article

  1. Drake Maye
    DrakeMaye
    QBNENE
    PPG
    19.5
    Proj
    317.9

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