Bill Belichick doesn’t hold back on criticism. He left the New England Patriots; however, he might still be interested in knowing how the quarterback situation plays out with Drake Maye. It’s no surprise that the 72-year-old former head coach, unlike his former pupil Josh McDaniels, thinks that Drake Maye is not ready for a starting job.

A couple of days ago, the former Las Vegas Raiders coach went on Julian Edelman’s podcast Games with Names, and broke down how Drake Maye has looked in the preseason so far. While McDaniels thinks the Pats’ third overall pick is “athletic” and can be used like Josh Allen, Bill Belichick’s assessment was a flip side of having those qualities as a quarterback.

“You like his size and you like his arm, I think his inexperience really, you know, showed up in the preseason, you know, as it did a little bit at North Carolina,” Belichick in a recent episode of Coach with Bill Belichick. “And I think he needs a lot of seasoning in terms of reading coverages, overall throwing mechanics, and consistency. Is he a big, fast athlete? Yeah, but I think it’s going to take more than that to be ready to play quarterback in the National Football League.”

The Athletic did an honest breakdown of Maye’s career at UNC. His last year at UNC was a huge regression from what he had going on a year before. That’s because in 2023, Maye lost his two best WRs and the O-Line got worse. Per the Athletic, the former Tar Heel QB made “ill-advised decisions” and tried to play “superhero” when he didn’t need to.

And just like Bill Belichick, the column pointed out how Maye’s arm strength can sometimes be his enemy. “There are times when he’ll miss easy underneath throws because he’s delivering an all-out fastball even when it’s not necessary,” per The Athletic. Another interesting thing to note here is that Maye threw the fewest second half touchdowns and most second half interceptions in 2023.

In the 2022 season, Maye had 4,321 yards, 38 touchdowns and 7 interceptions and those numbers went down to 3,608 yards, 24 touchdowns and 9 picks in the next season. Now that we’ve corroborated the 8x Super Bowl winning coach’s theories, it’s time to look at what Bill Belichick’s underling and the former Raiders coach had to say about Drake Maye.

How Josh McDaniels’ Drake Maye take differs from Bill Belichick’s

For one, Maye is slated to be an athletic quarterback. But his numbers go beyond just the passing stats. In his last two seasons at UNC combined, Maye rushed for 1,147 yards and scored 16 rushing touchdowns in the process. We saw glimpses of his run game in the preseason game against the Commanders where the QB chose to run on a 3 and long rather than passing the pigskin. Maye completed 13 of his 20 passes in that game and even threw a TD.

“[Maye] Got great size, really athletic,” said McDaniels to Julian Edelman and established that he doesn’t know how “he’ll fit” in the new offense.  McDaniels went as far as to say that the Patriots rookie possesses Josh Allen like qualities, which might have been a bit far fetched.

While Drake Maye might have all the attributes of a great quarterback, we can’t ignore the fact that real NFL defenses are scary and the regular season games are nothing like preseason.