The college soccer player with tousled blond hair, matted by humidity and sweat, makes his way down the sideline of the turf field at Oceanside Collegiate Academy with a buddy. Here to get his own work in, his eyes are fixed on the 50-yard line.“Are my eyes deceiving me?” he says. “Is that Drake Maye?”He asks a group of middle-aged dads standing nearby if he and his friend can go out to the field to take a picture, and within minutes, the starstruck students will leave their workout with a heck of a souvenir.Maye, his three older brothers—Luke, Cole and Beau—and his former North Carolina teammate Sam Howell tried to practice on a set of nearby grass fields, but those were taken by a different group of soccer players and a punter. On their family vacation, this high school turf field just happened to be where they could find space.Within an hour, they’ll be inside the school’s nearby gym, running basketball drills for oldest brother Luke, a 29-year-old forward fresh off a Japan B.League championship with the Kobe Storks, the same way they ran football drills for Drake.Jamie Schwaberow/Sports Illustrated“We’ve been here three and a half days and spent like three hours on the beach,” says Luke while driving back to the Charleston-area beach house that their parents, Mark and Aimee, rented for the week. “We’re always playing golf, playing pickleball. Last night, we were playing tennis until 11. When we got home, we were playing cards, board games until 1 a.m. There’s always something going on.”If today’s quarterbacks seem to be built in a lab by mechanics coaches, nutritionists, sport psychologists and the like, then Drake Maye is an outlier. Where others now specialize before middle school, Maye was a three-sport athlete into his teenage years and even considered playing both football and basketball in college. Where some had QB gurus in first grade, Maye didn’t start working with one until after his freshman year of high school.And that’s what makes projecting the third-year quarterback’s career interesting. As good as Maye was last season—he finished second in MVP voting and led a stunning 10-game turnaround as he guided the Patriots to their first post–Tom Brady Super Bowl appearance—the 23-year-old is just tapping into the athletic potential he’s flashed for a long time.“I think last year could be a small step, and I’m not even talking stats-wise, but for me playing quarterback,” says Maye, a couple of hours after the morning workout, leaning back in a rocking chair on the porch. “It could only be a building block for what I think I can reach.”Drake Maye on moving forward after the Patriots' loss to the Seahawks in the Super Bowl: “I think last year could be a small step, and I’m not even talking stats-wise, but for me playing quarterback.” | Jamie Shwaberow/ Sports Illustrated‘The way that last game ended’So many of those building blocks fell into place organically in a childhood that was filled with football, basketball and baseball. “I guess early on you didn’t know what the kids might be best at, which particular sport,” says Mark, who was a two-time All-ACC selection at quarterback for North Carolina and is now an equities trader. “But I just wanted them to have fun playing all of them.”Not all of the Mayes followed in their father’s exact footsteps. Mark wanted all four to play at least one year of tackle football because he loved the life lessons the sport had given him—and while Luke and Drake were QBs, Cole was a tight end and Beau was a lineman. But, as Luke explains, Mark “would always put us at the most important positions.” That was especially true with Drake, who was a point guard, quarterback, pitcher, center fielder and shortstop.“I grew up with the ball in my hands a lot,” Drake says.He reaped the benefits and learned the responsibility of it, too. That’s something he’s felt every day since the rocket ship that was New England’s 2025 season crashed on a February afternoon in Santa Clara, Calif.If most everything up to that point hinted at how far Maye could go as a player,then Super Bowl LX put in plain sight how far he has yet to go. Having grown up so comfortable with the ball in his hands, Maye won’t run from the defeat. In fact, since the 29–13 loss to Seattle in which he threw two interceptions and was sacked six times, the Patriots’ coaches and others around him have seen a guy who’s owned every bit of the loss, aware of what it laid bare, without allowing it to create a negative mindset.“The way that last game ended … ” says Maye, collecting his thoughts. “I feel like when our defense played the way it played, it gave us a chance to win. It’s my responsibility, with the offense, to put points on the board. When you feel like you don’t do your part, that’s what eats at you.“What could I have done more after practice to hit that throw? I can think of five, 10 plays in the Super Bowl right now where you’re like, Man, this play could change your life. You win this game, and just knowing that that’s gone, and how much work you have to put in to get back to that moment, it’s just something that I won’t forget. I think it’ll help me.”Among those he’ll remember: A play in the second quarter, when he threw the ball behind Hunter Henry over the middle, leading the tight end into a hit from Seahawks safety Coby Bryant. And another in the third quarter, when he went deep to a covered DeMario Douglas rather than hitting a wide-open Rhamondre Stevenson in the flat. And another throw when he missed Douglas over the middle.Patriots offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels is challenging Maye mentally to get to the next level in his development. | The Boston Globe/Getty ImagesThe work to make up for all of that has been well underway. Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel and offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels handed Maye a development plan in the offseason, the same sort of plan they give all of their players and that McDaniels gave Brady for years. Maye contributed to the plan as it evolved, too.The first order of business is to better protect the football. Maye’s turnover stats blew up in the playoffs, exposing a problem. He fumbled eight times in 17 regular-season games and seven times in four playoff games. He had eight picks in the regular season, then four in the postseason. Second, the coaches want him to better use his knowledge of the scheme to attack defenses and get the unit out of bad plays.Then there’s being able to surmount the issue of everyone now having tape of Maye in McDaniels’s offense, a challenge he started to feel in the playoffs. This is a task his coaches have taken head-on with him, as Maye works to round out his game.“Physically, I feel like I’m at a good spot with the throws I can make and what I can do with my legs,” Maye says. “I think mentally is where, in this game, you reach that next level. That’s where Coach McDaniels and Coach Vrabel have done a great job of pushing me.”There’s also the leadership piece. Last year, the coaches urged Maye to take greater command in his second season. He said he felt like he needed to earn it first. Now that he has, he’s found his voice, been more vocal in meetings and shown he’s comfortable directing more veteran players. It’s not difficult to figure out where he got that from.The youngest of four boys, Maye (above with his brothers in 2024, second from right) honed his competitive spirit early. | Peyton Williams/Getty ImagesThe Mayes 20th century playgroundFor over an hour or so on the field at Oceanside Collegiate Academy, the older brothers played receiver for Drake and Howell (who spent last season on the Eagles’ roster), the same way they’d give Luke defensive looks during a spot-shooting drill later in the gym (Drake was tasked with closing out on Luke near the three-point arc). Inside the work, there was more of what the Mayes always do: compete.At one point, Drake offered Beau, a former UNC basketball player, $100 if he could hit him on a 20-yard in-cut, a throw far more difficult than it looks. (Beau couldn’t.) Later, a three-point shootout broke out. All of it was simply an extension of what happened organically for years on the cul-de-sac at the end of Aegean Court in Huntersville, N.C.The Mayes now describe their property there as a 20th century playground. A long, skinny backyard was perfect for football. In the front yard, there was enough room for baseball. The driveway was, of course, for hoops.“The best part about it was we really gained a lot of our skills from it, inside the household, playing against each other,” Drake says. “And my dad was the best at fine-tuning skills.”The younger brothers would watch the older brothers and mimic them, with Mark there to officiate and help guide them. Aimee, whom Mark courted out of a UNC powderpuff game, was a three-sport high school athlete herself, having played basketball, softball and tennis.“She’s probably as competitive as any of us,” Mark says.Drake, Mark says, was the runt in relative terms—a late bloomer compared to Beau, who grew to 6'4" and around 250 pounds before he turned 13. Drake was also the fastest at a young age, perhaps, they joke now, as a means of survival against his big brothers. Drake’s best sport was baseball; then, as Luke became a hoops star at UNC, Drake shifted his focus to basketball.Still, the fiercest competition he’d ever face was always right there at home.Once, when they were kids, Beau and Drake, born only 14 months apart, were playing one-on-one on a mini hoop in the hallway. Beau blocked a shot from Drake so hard that Drake tumbled into the staircase and split the back of his head open. Then, about a year later, a 10-year-old Drake blew past a 14-year-old Cole for a layup in the driveway and talked a little too much trash after—so Beau lowered his shoulder into him on the next possession and chipped Drake’s front tooth.Until three or four years ago, in fact, the brothers were still playing King of the Court in that driveway, with Mark as the ref (and fight-settler). Eventually, Mark came to the conclusion that having an NFL prospect play in those games wasn’t such a good idea anymore.“There for a while, Drake was taking a lot of L’s just because he was the smallest,” says Cole, who now works in real estate. “And I think that pushed him to grind at these different sports even more, because he felt like he needed to play catch up.”Maye gave up basketball to only pursue football despite being pushed to walk on at North Carolina. | USA TODAY Sports via Reuters ConnectMaye’s pursuit of footballDrake’s eventual choice to focus on football isn’t at all complicated to explain—basketball is chock full of 6'5" shooting guards and, he says, “Trying to make it to that level, it was like, Man, being a 6'5" quarterback sounds a lot cooler.”His natural ability for his dad’s game didn’t take long to be recognized. Stuck behind an upperclassman at Hough High, Drake transferred to powerhouse Myers Park after his freshman year, joining a roster with a bevy of NFL players’ offspring. That spring and summer, he immediately stood out in practices while playing with them in seven-on-seven, so much so that he got his first scholarship offer—from storied SEC power Tennessee—before taking a single snap at his new high school.Through the experience, he got his first private throwing coach, Anthony Boone of QB Country, and he decided to walk away from AAU basketball. He continued to play high school hoops, though, doing it well enough to eventually get offers from schools like Clemson and Cincinnati. Before COVID-19 cost him his senior year in both sports, Tar Heels coach Roy Williams, having coached Luke, broached the idea of Drake walking on to the basketball team for a year or two. Williams would retire just a few months after Drake’s arrival at UNC, and by then Drake decided to only pursue football.Still, the innate instincts he gained from his upbringing stayed with him. So much so that his brothers can easily pick out plays when Maye’s multisport background was evident during his starry 2025 campaign.There are pure baller snaps, two of which came in Maye’s breakout Week 5 performance in Buffalo. The first and most obvious is a play raised by Luke in which Drake was chased out of the pocket and, hard against the sideline, made a throw on the run throw to Stefon Diggs, racing between two defenders, for 32 yards to set up a go-ahead score. Then Cole cites a play on the game-winning drive where 320-pound tackle DaQuan Jones was dragging Drake down by the collar, and Drake kept his feet and got the ball to Diggs for a first down.Then there are snaps where specific muscle memory surfaced. Beau brings up one from the second Buffalo game, where rookie back TreVeyon Henderson ran right, reversed field, and Drake went left to lead him, blocking Tre’Davious White 50 yards downfield to seal a 65-yard score.“That play kind of reminded me—it was like TreVeyon got a steal in basketball, and Drake thought they could have like a two-on-one fast break, and Drake would have to rip it out there to try to get down to the other end,” Beau says. “I think so many QBs in the league would just be like, ‘Hey, listen, I’m not taking my ass down there.’ ”Drake agrees, adding that the 32-yarder to Diggs reminds him of having to charge and throw off a slow roller at shortstop. He then gives some more examples of his own.“It’s like throwing a lob over somebody; I used to throw them all the time over to big Beau,” Drake says. “All those touch throws are just finding the distance and the height on the ball, like when you’re throwing in passes to the big man inside at point guard.”As those plays continue to pop up, Vrabel, McDaniels and quarterbacks coach Ashton Grant have found strengths in Maye they couldn’t have seen before coaching him. One is his competitive stamina—Luke says even he was impressed at how his brother came out of the Patriots’ 1–2 start the way he did, given the bumpy rookie year he experienced—and another is his physical and mental toughness.Both, of course, would be easy to trace back to Drake’s younger years, as the kid who took all those L’s and the beatings and kept on coming.The Maye family mottoThe three older Maye brothers went on ahead of Drake and Howell after leaving the gym, wanting to get back to the vacation house ahead of a 1:30 p.m. tee time—the beach would have to wait, again—while the two young quarterbacks went to pick up Raising Cane’s takeout. There was a loose plan to play putt-putt later.And while so much of this constant competition is off the cuff, there’s also a certain pride they all take in the way that they were raised.“Our team motto, our family motto is, Take No S---,” says Beau, now the head basketball coach at Hough High (his alma mater).Clearly, the fourth brother—the instigator of the crew, according to his siblings—has that attitude. So what happens when Drake is able to refine his game further, making up for the things he missed while pitching or shooting hoops?Maye mentions how his dad has taken to hounding him about little things. “He loves getting on me about the play clock,” he says. Mark admits this, and has told Drake that part of the reason he does so is that he finally has a son with whom he can share his quarterbacking experience. He finds it pretty cool to be able to do that. And Drake does, too.“The first three he kind of missed on,” Drake says, with a laugh. “I think with me, he got what, deep down, he really enjoys. And knowing how much he loved playing quarterback, I think he and my mom being able to watch and follow my career has been awesome for them. I’ll phrase this in two ways—being a football parent is different from basketball and baseball, and being a quarterback parent is different. It’s a different amount of stress, a different amount of excitement, a different amount of love and appreciation.“And it’s just the best sport in the world, and I’m playing the best position in the world. It’s hard to beat that.”Sure enough, after all of these years, his dad’s passion has become his own. And that this happened the way it did is a pretty good indicator that, for the Mayes and for the Patriots, as good as it’s been, the best is yet to come.Add us as a preferred source on GoogleFollow