Quarter Season Notes, New England Patriots Edition: Maye Still Alive; Peppers Might Be A Cokehead

Well, there’s good news and bad news up in Foxborough. The good news: newbie quarterback Drake Maye’s highly anticipated debut last weekend was unanimously considered a success. Despite a decisive team loss to C.J. Stroud’s suddenly powerhouse Texans, Maye successfully navigated the entire game behind the Patriots’ woeful offensive line and didn’t die. The bad news: star safety Jabrill Peppers might be a cokehead. We’ll start with the bad news first, so that we may end on a relative high note.

On October 5, Patriots’ safety Jabrill Peppers was arrested in Braintree, Massachusetts. The charges included, but may not be limited to strangulation, assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, and drug possession: [https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/41660780/patriots-jabrill-peppers-arrested-assault-drug-charges]

The ESPN article above by Mike Reiss states that Peppers was also charged with a substance believed to be cocaine, which has since been confirmed. Reiss also reports that Peppers’s girlfriend was present at the time and she is alleging that he hit her, shoved her head into a wall, choked her “at least six times,” stripped her naked and made her go outside. Peppers has since been put on the Commissioner’s exempt list and Robert Kraft has stated that if the allegations are true, he will be cut. Peppers’s lawyer states that they have evidence that “sheds real doubt on the allegations, including videotaped evidence,” that will exonerate Peppers. He states that the woman in question was asked to leave, refused, fell down the stairs and blamed Peppers for the incident. We appreciate Robert Kraft’s respect for Peppers’s rights and his willingness to wait until investigations are complete and all the facts and evidence have been considered rather than simply cutting him immediately upon hearing the allegation. We believe it is important to withhold judgment until all the facts are in.

Having said that, here’s a PSA, from us to everybody: if you’re going to go on a coke bender and choke out your wife/date/girlfriend, or threaten her at gunpoint (please DON’T?), Massachusetts is not the place to do it. If Peppers had stopped at “coke bender,” then Bay State authorities would most likely have been happy to find a way to minimize the impact of the charges. This is, after all, one of the deepest blue states in the nation, and drugs of all kinds are considered by many to be a legitimate recreational activity. But domestic violence and other such crimes against women and children are generally taken much more seriously, and there is no way an athlete is going to just weasel his way around the accusation, no matter how critical he is to the Patriots’ secondary.

For instance, everyone in New England will remember that prosecutors only dropped a serious set of domestic violence charges against Boston Bruins’ forward Milan Lucic back in February after his wife pivoted during the proceedings and decided to invoke marital privilege, in order to avoid testifying against her husband. As a result, a key element of the state’s case (the 911 call) was thrown out, destroying the state’s ability to prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt. The charges were dropped, but the Suffolk County District Attorney’s office had been more than willing to see it through to the end, even if it meant hauling a major Boston athlete and his wife into court and putting them on the stand: Lucic was part of the 2011 Bruins team that won the Stanley Cup. As such, if Peppers’s lawyer really does have exculpatory video evidence, we hope it is very clear and convincing. We also trust that we are not damaging the Patriots’ ability to lure free agents to New England by pointing any of this out.

Peppers has become a critical piece of the Patriots’ defense since Bill Belichick brought him on board in 2022 and revived his career. Through four games this year before getting injured, he has registered twenty-three tackles and two passes defended, and the Patriots’ defense is noticeably less effective without him on the field. Since the Pats’ defense has been a keystone element of their franchise for the past twenty-five years, losing such a critical piece at this point in the rebuild puts an extra element of pressure on their nascent offense and could prove disastrous.

Which brings us to the good news: Drake Maye played his debut game in front of a home crowd on Sunday, and the general consensus from all reasonable and intelligent adults is that he did an excellent job. He threw for 243 yards, 3 TDs, and 2 INTs. We’re not sure why certain elements in the Boston sports media are trying to advance a narrative that he threw three interceptions, but according to ESPN Stats per Game, and our own eyes, it was two [https://www.espn.com/nfl/player/_/id/4431452/drake-maye.], one of which was off of a tip. He also led the team in rushing yards with 38, and became the first QB since 1950 to throw 3+ touchdown passes AND lead his team in rushing yards in his debut NFL game. Considering that the Texans’ defense ranks 8^th in the league in EPA play on the season, and are considered top three overall, this is indisputably an impressive feat.

It is entirely possible to acknowledge that Maye made some rookie mistakes without using those mistakes to define his performance. Sure, he lost a fumble and was raw in the pocket but, he’s a rookie. Why harp on it? They all do that. All rookies fumble a few times and throw interceptions. All quarterbacks throw interceptions. Why act like these common rookie mistakes are somehow unique to Maye? Those mistakes should be an expectation of a rookie’s early games. Why act like a couple of overthrows early in the game should be an indictment of his entire performance, or even any real cause for concern?

It’s a false narrative and, frankly, we don’t want to hear it. Maye’s upcoming London adversary, Trevor Lawrence, fumbled the ball twelve times in 2022, another twelve in 2023, and in 2021—the year he was drafted—nine. Lawrence has fumbled the ball thirty five times in three years, and the media has only this year stopped constantly insisting that he really is the next Payton Manning. We like Trevor Lawrence, and we want him to succeed, but we cannot ignore the fact that all of his struggles and mistakes have been brushed off, explained away, and/or blamed on other people by the sports media for the past two years.

Both Jayden Daniels and Caleb Williams had far less glittering debuts than Maye had, and they are already neck and neck for Offensive Rookie of the Year (we’re not saying either of them wouldn’t deserve it). Yet Maye’s game is being examined through some sort of transmission electron microscope by his own media, and any reason at all is being used to denigrate his performance and minimize his accomplishments. To make matters worse, they have now demonstrated that if they can’t find any mistakes that are egregious enough to allow them to argue that all is still lost, well, they’ll just make some up. Pretend he got less comfortable over the course of the game. Add an extra interception to his totals. It’s not cool, and Drake Maye deserves better than for Robert Kraft to force him to regularly eat a bunch of crap from guys who used to bitch about Tom Brady even after games that he won.

The Patriots are playing their next game this Sunday in London against Jacksonville, and we are reasonably optimistic that the benefits of Maye’s golden arm will be able to trump the loss incurred by Peppers’s coke habit. We just hope that Lawrence doesn’t choose this game to play up to his hype and consistently hang on to the football.

[Photo of Jabrill Peppers courtersy of: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jabrill_Peppers_2019_(48824607106)_(1).jpg#:~:text=All%2DPro%20Reels%20from%20District%20of%20Columbia%2C%20USA%2C%20CC%20BY%2DSA%202.0%20%3Chttps%3A//creativecommons.org/licenses/by%2Dsa/2.0%3E%2C%20via%20Wikimedia%20Commons]