What kind of Faustian deal with the Devil the New England Patriots had to make to go from Tom Brady and Bill Belichick to Drake Maye and Mike Vrabel in the span of just five years, we’ll never know.
But it’s paying dividends.
The Patriots ended a six-year drought by winning the AFC East division title. They are the No. 2 seed in the AFC and are favored at home against the Los Angeles Chargers on Wild Card weekend. Maye was the betting favorite to win the MVP for much of the late-season stretch, while Vrabel is the betting favorite to win Coach of the Year in his first campaign back at Foxborough.
However, not everything has gone the Patriots’ way. There is still some billboard material for them. Maye was the favorite to win MVP before Matthew Stafford threw four TDs in the season finale. Now the Rams signal caller is the frontrunner.
And more fodder came on Saturday—right on time, the day before their playoff game—courtesy of the Associated Press. Stafford earned First-Team All-Pro honors while Maye had to settle for the Second-Team.
While the stats do certainly suggest that Stafford may have the edge (it’s hard to remember a time when a QB threw 46 TDs and didn’t win MVP), the fact that his Rams are finishing as a Wild Card team does make his selection a little bit strange. Maye, meanwhile, led a 14-win team to a division title and a No. 2 seed.
You have to go back to 2008 to find the last QB to win the MVP without also winning their division. Peyton Manning won that season in a year that was very similar to this one with no clear-cut favorite.
And yet, the veteran Stafford is still getting all of the plaudits despite that Wild Card status.
But no matter, because that late-season disrespect will light a fire under the second-year QB’s rump that will spread through the rest of New England. And using that fire, Maye could really make the All-Pro and MVP voters look silly.
All he has to do is go on an unexpectedly deep run in his first postseason and put on a individual legacy performance while he's at it.
If Maye led the Patriots—and we mean actually led, not carried by a defense and a well-coached roster—to the AFC Championship this early in the Patriots’ rebuild project, it would make the voters regret their decision immensely.
That is, unless Stafford does something similar and goes on to win his second Super Bowl in five years.