This Week in Fandom: Save Me, Drake Maye.
Every week, I’ll write my nephew letters about sports that he most likely will not read. They will likely centre on my love of the Patriots Giants, Yankees, Knicks, and Tottenham Hotspur, and his love of Chelsea, LeBron James, and prop bets.
Gawddamnit, I finally did it. After years of wandering in the American football wilderness, for an allegiance that would suit both my newfound love of the game and my (um) values, I’m home: back with the Patriots where I belong. And why? Because first-year quarterback Drake Maye has seen the stats and doesn’t care one lick about the odds.
My modest draft report, delivered via voice-note to a select few insiders, made the following assumptions about 2024’s quarterback class:
“I guess Caleb Williams will pan out cause, like, everybody says he will?”
“I like that Bo Nix kid. He’s got a cool-ass name, and he plays quarterback like he wants to go up and catch the damn football himself.”
“Can somebody get my guy Jaden Daniels a sandwich, and could we please go HAM (ha ha) on the MUSTAAAARRRRRRRDDDDDDD?”
“I don’t know, man: Michael Penix Jr. is giving babyface Geno Smith.”
“Drake Maye” — this one’s actually somewhere on this website – “will willingly trade you a body part for a down … hopefully not one that sticks him in Injured Reserve half the year.”
I’m trying not to fire up the highlights, because there’s a lot of week to get to still. On one of his recent pods Bill Simmons said what’s most refreshing to New England fans isn’t just that the kid can play. It’s that he does things Tom Brady never could; he’s a mobile quarterback that can throw on the run, and he lights your eyes up consistently because he seems to know exactly when to go for the check-down pass, when to sling it (save for 1/2 game-ending interceptions), when to climb the pocket. (With Caleb Williams, in comparison and at best, you get the sense that he scrambles off-script whenever he thinks it’ll look the most awesome.)
I still can’t believe that late touchdown to even it up against Tennessee three weeks ago. I still can’t believe this pass, and how much bigger his bag reveals itself to be each week. I choose to believe the heavens have heard my prayers, and finally sent New England its very own Justin Herbert.
Do you know how weird it is, all of a sudden, to not pick what game I’m watching based on the CBS broadcast? I want all of that Drake Maye shit, every last down, all the time.
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I wish I hadn’t spent 2 hours yesterday talking about the 76ers, who we of course deduced are a strong candidate for stoopidest or at least silliest NBA franchise of the decade. The Knicks just about scraped the smartness column, upon further sleep, but, you know. I have medium-term concerns.
We described smart GM-ing as the subtle art of discerning which basketball situations warrant additional bake versus which ones to mortgage for the chance at signing a superstar. How the latter movement requires groundwork — if you’re not trading for LeBron James, Steph Curry or Nikola Jokic — to ensure there’s a cultural spine organisationally to counter-weight the whims of a top-5 guy.
I was thinking about that groundwork in the shower this morning, with one eye of course on the front office gigs in Charlotte or Washington. Can we fill the wait period, for a star, with digestible, seemingly competitive basketball — do we have a culture independent of star A, B, or C’s whims, habits, and temperament — and does a possible trade underline a basketball identity that genuine contenders would thenceforth need to account for?
In this sense I’m cooler on what the Karl Anthony Towns trade actually means, even though Towns has quickly established himself as maybe my favourite Knick so far this season; and even though so many of his trips into the paint look like first class travel. If Giannis Antetokounmpo is gently prying himself loose from Milwaukee, it makes me think you (the Léon Rose regime) could’ve waited just one more trade window to take stock of what you actually had.
You could’ve used DiVincenzo to mask this modest Mikhail Bridges output, whose emergence the historical tape isn’t exactly bullish on. You could’ve placed much less pressure on Josh Hart and Deuce McBride to account for a bench that lacks shooters, and a starting defence that lacks stops. It’s not just Julius Randle we’ve traded, or DiVincenzo’s lasers, or even all those draft picks: it’s one of the most underrated commodities in the NBA — bodies! — and a situation we didn’t give even one chance to generate some data.
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I’m 51% cat person, 49% dog. I’ve been wondering lately if I’m 51% Ange-Out and 49% Ange-In.
Philosophically, I can’t help but suspect a complete disinterest by ‘Ange-ball’ in building a steady defensive architecture. I’m all for guns-blazing football, if there’s more to rely on than Micky Van De Ven’s speed and Cuti Romero’s willingness to break legs at a moment’s notice. If Arsenal once knew how to place every man behind the ball, out of possession and without compromising the high press, why can’t we nick their homework? Why can’t the two midfielders you present as holding ones hang back when you’ve got your wingbacks orchestrating the attack?
More theoretically, why can’t Ange Ball factor position swaps into its execution when the wingbacks fly high up the field, so that the onus falls on attackers to convert those invasions? Why can’t the one centre-back function as the designated driver, by staying out of the high line, so there’s some insurance against the quick break? I hate not being able to see what the bloody hell’s going on, or to presume nothing much is — if only because Ange Postecoglu waits forever to actually react.
I was at a Christmas party in the sort of cabin you might see on a BBC drama set in Wales, eating Brazilian carrot cake, when Spurs beat City 4-nil at the Etihad. This is exactly the sort of result people will use to call us snowflakes in one or two weeks’ time, when we’re karmically drubbed by Fulham or Bournemouth or both. Why do I suspect the only learning we’ll take into those fixtures is hey guess what, James Maddison’s handy at football again?
I need to see more, because we embarrassed United in their house 8 weeks ago, didn’t we? Happy Birthday, Madders, you beauty.
