The New England Patriots won the preseason game against the Carolina Panthers today, but at what cost? Their prized possession, Drake Maye, saw the field for a single series and it has left fans and analysts perplexed. Mostly because they didn’t think that third-string QB Bailey Zappe would start the show today.

Tom E Curran thought that this was a huge mistake on Jerod Mayo’s part. He took to television and gave some insights into what happened that day. He thought the Patriots HC had botched the first preseason game, to say the least.

“Huge missed opportunity,” said Curran. “I had a former coach text me and say, ‘what are they doing?’ This is a missed opportunity. This is the kind of thing that you want to be able to get a massive amount of tape on, spending entire day, entire weekend working on corrections all the things that you can do. Nothing beats a preseason game because nothing is scripted and its full contact. So, a huge missed opportunity.”

The Patriots released their unofficial depth chart some time ago and Jacoby Brissett was listed as the starting quarterback, followed by Drake Maye and Bailey Zappe. As it happened, Zappe played for the majority of the game, coming out with 12 of his 20 passes completed over 108 yards and no touchdowns.

It was Kevin Harris who put the Patriots on the board in the 2 quarter, while Joe Milton (who “impressed” Mayo today) helped out JaQuae Jackson with a 38-yard touchdown pass in the last quarter. This was not at all what people were expecting. That’s because Drake Maye was slated to be a starter at one point. Instead, he came out with 2 of 3 completed passes over 19 yards, a far cry from starting QB numbers.

But why did Jerod Mayo pull such a stunt?

NBC Analysts reveal Jerod Mayo’s thought process of underutilizing Drake Maye

There have been rumors for a while now that the Patriots are going to release Bailey Zappe sooner rather than later. Per Tom E Curran, this is what inspired Jerod Mayo to put him on the front line so he can prove himself and possibly attract the teams willing to give him a go.

“I’ve heard people speculate that it’s somehow to raise the trade value of Bailey Zappe,” said Curran as his colleagues seemed awestruck. “First of all, he is the fourth quarterback. He’s going to be released. No team is trading anything for a guy that they’re going to bring in and have be their third quarterback. It’s probably more or less, ‘the kid hasn’t got any reps, we want to get him reps.’”

However, things couldn’t have been different from the New England Patriots’ rookie HC’s point of view. Mayo did a press conference after the game and revealed his thought process behind putting Zappe on the Patriots’ front lines.

“We wanted to see Jacoby obviously go out there and operate, as well as Drake [Maye], mixing them in there with the one’s. The rest of those guys like Zappe and Joe [Milton], they went out there and finished up the game. I thought they did a good job. But that was kind of the thinking,” said Mayo, who didn’t give any hints about Zappe being released anytime soon.

After this 17-3 win against the Panthers, the Patriots will be hosting the Philadelphia Eagles soon. Mayo indicated in the presser that the Patriots have a joint practice coming up with the Eagles soon and there is a possibility that other players might get more reps. Hopefully, we see Drake Maye in action against the Eagles.