An NFL Scout Says Drake Maye Would Be the No. 1 Pick if He Was in This Year's Draft

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In my deteriorating, bourbon-soaked brain, President's Day is typically the unofficial cut off point where I quit thinking about the last football season and start looking ahead. For instance, the window for Franchise Tagging your free agents (not a concern in Foxboro, that's for damn sure) is tomorrow, which makes it pretty much the kickoff of the 2025 NFL year. And free agency officially opens on March 12. So like Tom Hanks says in Apollo 13 as they're heading home, "The Earth is getting awfully big in our window."

But as I'm trying to sort out the Mike Vrabel regime's battle plan going forward, it's impossible to not look back as how badly this franchise screwed itself with that unnecessary, unwanted win in Week 18. In the best of drafts, the difference between the No. 1 pick and the No. 4 is massive. Going by the old Jimmy Johnson Draft Value Chart that everyone disavows but every swap of picks always seems to go by, the difference in draft capital is equivalent to the 10th overall pick. So the value of a guy you expect to be a Pro Bowl caliber starter, at the very least. So yeah, thanks for nothing, former coaching staff. We appreciate your throwing a wrench into the gears of this rebuild on your way out the door. 

But if there's a reason to feel at all good about the situation none of us wanted to find ourselves in as they broke a perfectly useful six game winning streak, it's the fact this not the draft where being first overall had all that much value. In fact, according several scouts ESPN talked to, there's not a lot of worth losing games for at the top of this draft. So while Tennessee is expected to try and trade back and add picks, they're not going to get much:

The overall feeling is the Titans will trade the top pick of the draft. The execs, coaches and scouts who voted that way believe the Titans lack true game-altering players and say none of the quarterbacks in this draft class can elevate the current supporting cast. …

"They want more picks, so I think they'd come off that first pick," an AFC scout said. "But it takes two to tango. Someone has to fall in love with one of these quarterbacks enough to give up a ransom to get to the top."

In fact, one of those scouts insists having the third pick in the 2024 draft was worth more than anything available in this one:

Mike Reiss - If Drake Maye was part of this year's draft class, he would probably be the No. 1 pick. That was the opinion a national scout shared with ESPN NFL Nation reporters.

So while the value of the Patriots' No. 4 pick might not be as high as it would in other years, one silver lining for the franchise is that it is fortunate to have landed Maye last year.

"The top guys in this class wouldn't be in the top three from last year's crop, in my opinion," the scout said. "Good debate on if they would be in the top five actually."

Believe me, I'm not even remotely suggesting I'm glad they beat the Bills. That win added nothing of value to our lives other than some confidence in Joe Milton. But we can get that watching him play in August. Even by my Weymouth Public Schools math I can figure out that first is better than fourth. But there is some comfort in knowing that:

A. This is not the year that teams will back a dump truck filled with draft capital to get that top pick, and

B. Last year was the time to be in that Top 3. 

Which we already assumed from watching the Giants desperately trying to shake the third pick loose from New England and Eliot Wolf demanding nothing less than they empty their draft treasury:

So if ever there was a year to be one of the three worst teams in the league, it was 2024. Mission Accomplished on that. And if there was ever a season where accidentally pulling a useless win out your prison wallet in early January, it was 2025. Timing is everything. 

Even as I try to take comfort in these assessments, I realize how counter-productive it is. We'd be better off having the entire football world dying to move up into the Top 3 because (in no particular order) Shedeur Sanders and Cam Ward are generational talents that will make whoever has the wisdom to draft them instant Super Bowl contenders. Have both of them come off the board before the Patriots are on the clock and we get the consolation prize between Travis Henry and Abdul Carter, and win in either case. So by all means, let the bidding wars begin. Let one of them drop out of the Top 3 and we're probably looking at the Patriots dropping back and drafting need, like LT Will Campbell (assuming he meets the arm-measuring standards at the Combine) or Edge rusher Mason Graham. 

All of which is a complicated way, filled with variables, to confirm what we've known to be true for months now: The Patriots were lucky, historically lucky, to be in a position to get Drake Maye when they did. The comfort of knowing that will take pretty much all of the sting of letting the 2025 first overall pick slip through their hands.