There are two groups of people who want Drake Maye to actually be a good quarterback: New England Patriots fans and his family. Everyone else in the world has been totally fine with the Patriots being headless and pathetic ever since Tom Brady left.
Unfortunately, that’s not the case anymore. Drake Maye came into his second year in the NFL with an offensive coordinator who knows what he’s doing, and he started to light the world on fire. You really hate to see it.
Comparison is the thief of joy
This isn’t about players who made the biggest jump from their first year to their second year. Or QBs who went on to become the best to ever play for their team.
There are a whole bunch of guys who ride the bench in their rookie season and start in their second season. It’d be messed up and disingenuous to compare those to guys like Drake Maye, who got thrown in the fire their rookie seasons.
This is about the quarterbacks who have had the best second seasons of their professional careers in the NFL.
First off, we have to look at what Drake Maye has done this season. He’s led his team to an 11-2 record (which makes him a realistic option for MVP), and he’s thrown for 262 yards and 1.7 touchdowns per game.
We’ve all been watching him, and it’s been very impressive. Sure, his schedule hasn’t been super difficult or anything like that, but you can see that he knows what he’s doing and he’s doing it at a very high level…
But how does that compare to some of the greats? Let’s start with the more recent guys first.
Lamar Jackson: 2019
In the 2018 draft, the Ravens traded back into the end of the first round and drafted 2016 Heisman-winner Lamar Jackson with the 32nd pick. In his second season, he threw for 3,127 yards and an NFL-leading 36 touchdowns, rushed for 1,206 yards for an NFL-leading 6.9 yards per carry, and seven touchdowns.
All in all, he had 208 passing yards, 2.4 passing touchdowns, 80.4 rushing yards, and roughly 0.5 rushing touchdowns per game.
Oh, and then he was a pro bowler, first-team All-Pro, second in offensive player of the year voting, and the youngest player in the Super Bowl era to be the NFL MVP. That’s a hell of a season.
Patrick Mahomes: 2018
There’s a very real chance that Mahomes’ second season in the NFL is the best and most impressive second season that anyone will have this century. Is that hyperbole? Maybe not.
He hopped right into the starting job, was a Pro Bowler, first-team All-Pro, Offensive Player of the Year, and NFL MVP because he threw for 5,097 yards and an NFL-leading 50 touchdowns. They made it to the AFC Conference Championship game, where they lost to the soon-to-be Super Bowl Champion Patriots.
That season alone was unreal, and then you add in that it was his first year starting? Sheesh.
For reference, he had 318 passing yards and 3-ish passing touchdowns per game.
Carson Wentz: 2017
The 13 games Carson Wentz played in 2017 were 13 of the best quarterbacked games you could ever watch. He led the Eagles to the top of the NFC with an 11-2 record, and he did it with a level of quarterback magic that was unbeknownst to man.
He wouldn’t go down. He would smash through people. His duck-under move was undeniable. And he could throw the ball a mile through the air and hit a dime. And then he tore his ACL, and he was never the same again. He was absolutely going to be the NFL MVP that season, but he had to settle for being a Pro Bowler and a second-team All-Pro.
If it weren’t for Wentz’s dominance that season, the Eagles wouldn’t have had the cushion that they needed for Nick Foles to get right and become a hero in the postseason.
He threw for 3,296 yards, 33 touchdowns, and only seven interceptions. That’s 253 passing yards, 2.5 touchdowns, .5-ish interceptions per game.
Kurt Warner: 1999
Technically, 1999 was Kurt Warner’s second season in the NFL. He was undrafted in 1994 and played in the Arena Football League and on an NFL Europe team before he was the St. Louis Rams’ third-string quarterback in 1998.
Trent Green tore his ACL in the 1999 preseason, and Warner ended up getting named the starter… And then he led the Greatest Show on Turf to a Super Bowl.
In that season, he threw for 4,353 yards, 41 touchdowns, and had an NFL-leading 65.1% completion rate. When the ball left his hand, his pass catchers made plays. He had the highest passer rating in the league that season and the most yards per throw.
He ended up as a Pro Bowler, a first-team All-Pro, the NFL MVP, and the Super Bowl MVP. This was, hands down, the best second season anyone has ever had.
We’re looking at 272 passing yards and 2.5 touchdowns per game… on top of all the other things.
Dan Marino: 1984
You can’t have an awesome second-season discussion without talking about “The Best to Never Do It.” In his second season, he lead the league in attempts (564), completions (362), yards (5,084), touchdowns (48), touchdown percentage (8.5), success rate (54.9%), yards per pass (9), yards per game (317.8), Passer Rating (108.9), and sack percentage (2.25).
That’s a lot of numbers to say that a guy was the best quarterback in the NFL during a season. He ended up as a Pro Bowler, first-team All-Pro, Offensive Player of the Year, and he was the NFL MVP.
The 1984 Dolphins got a bye in the first round of the playoffs, but Marino still threw for 1,001 yards. That was a record that would stand for 15 years, until Warner broke it in the 199 postseason.
But in the regular season, he threw for 317.8 yards and three touchdowns per game.
Going back to Drake Maye
Drake Maye’s 262 yards and 1.7 touchdowns per game aren’t really close to what some of these guys have done. It’s still really good, but lumping what he’s done this season in with some of the greats? That’s a little bit much.
That being said, if the dude goes on to be the MVP and/or win a Super Bowl, it’ll be kind of undeniable. Until then, we can all, as a collective, maybe slow our roll on him for a little bit.