New England beat Las Vegas 45-17 at Gillette Stadium on Sunday, and Drake Maye had the best game of his career doing it.
Maye finished 26-of-34 for 374 yards and four touchdowns with no interceptions, then added 25 rushing yards and a rushing touchdown. Five total scores, zero turnovers, a 76 percent completion rate.
“That’s about as clean as it gets from the quarterback,” NBC Sports Boston’s Phil Perry said. He is not wrong.
He Joined a List With One Other Name on It
Maye became the second player in Patriots history, including playoffs, to throw four touchdown passes and run for one in the same game. The other is Steve Grogan, who did it in 1987.
That is a franchise with a reasonably well-known quarterback history. Two names on the list is a short list.
It was also only Maye’s second career 300-yard passing game, which says something about how New England has been using him and how little it has needed to.
The Touchdowns Were Spread Everywhere
DeMario Douglas caught two of them, from 35 and eight yards. Kyle Williams took one 34 yards. Hunter Henry caught an 11-yarder. Rhamondre Stevenson punched in a five-yard run.
Five different New England players scored. That is the most encouraging detail in the box score, more than the 374 yards, because it means the offense is not running everything through one matchup and hoping.
“Definitely a confidence booster,” Williams said afterward.
New England Is Above .500 for the First Time
The Patriots are 3-2 with back-to-back wins, their first winning streak of the season and the first time this year they have been over .500. Mike Vrabel has them playing like a team that believes the quarterback is the answer rather than the question.
Las Vegas fell to 3-2. Kirk Cousins went 19-of-28 for 243 yards and a touchdown, and Brock Bowers was the Raiders’ best player again with eight catches on 10 targets for 110 yards and a score.
The Mendoza Cameo
The other thing that happened in the fourth quarter: Fernando Mendoza, the No. 1 overall pick, played his first NFL snaps in garbage time and went 6-of-8 for 48 yards.
Cousins had taken every offensive snap of the Raiders’ season before Sunday. Mendoza got his debut only because the game was decided by three scores, which is a rough way to get on the field but a real way to get on the field.
What to Take From It
New England has spent two seasons waiting to find out whether Maye is a franchise quarterback. Sunday is not proof. It is the best single piece of evidence yet, delivered against a .500 team at home with the offense functioning around him instead of in spite of him.
Three more games like that and the question goes away.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.