Why Drake Maye ‘Would Be the No. 1 Pick in Like 80% of Drafts’

NFL execs rave about the former North Carolina quarterback’s pro day. Plus, evaluations on Jayden Daniels, J.J. McCarthy, Michael Penix Jr., Bo Nix, Spencer Rattler and more in this week’s takeaways.

AFC offensive coach on Maye’s pro day. “Yeah, he missed like two throws high early and then he was money the rest of the way,” / Rob Kinnan-USA TODAY Sports

We’re back! The takeaways are, again, with Sports Illustrated, and I’m pumped to bring you this week’s jam-packed version …

Drake Maye’s pro day was a good example of what these workouts have become leading up to the NFL draft. There was a throw that got out on social media from the North Carolina quarterback that, to put it nicely, was a little off. Maye’s target was running a route to the sideline, and the ball went so far over the receiver’s head that he didn’t even put his hands up for it. Predictably, the play got clipped on social media, and was used as an indictment against the 21-year-old.

Want the truth? It was part of a tough start that was shaken off very quickly.

In the end, Maye’s 70-plus throwing session confirmed what scouts already thought of him, including an AFC offensive coach who made the trip to Chapel Hill for Thursday’s throwing session.

“Yeah, he missed like two throws high early and then he was money the rest of the way,” he texted. “He’s so talented. He would be the No. 1 pick in like 80% of drafts.”

I followed up with this particular coach on the phone to dig a little deeper.

“He’s a puppy—he’s so young, he’s so talented, he can make every throw, he’s a freak,” the coach says. “[The workout] started out showing his ability to move, the tight, compact release. The ball jumps off his hand. He did a good job moving and throwing the ball off-balance. There were a couple off one foot. They did a nice job of having a lot of throws in there, a different variety of throws. He has no limitations.”

The coach then compared him to Los Angeles Chargers quarterback Justin Herbert, in his belief that in his final year in college, the offense Herbert played in held him back in some ways, and forced him to carry the group in others. And while it manifested differently for  the two of them—with Herbert, there weren’t a lot of bad plays, but there weren’t a lot of spectacular plays, either; with Maye, you had to take a bunch of bad plays with great ones—what it means for NFL teams is similar.

So, you have to be able to separate the player from his circumstances as best as you can. The upshot for Maye is—similar to Herbert—the physical potential is unquestionable.

“What I’m impressed with is how big he is,” says another offensive coach from an AFC team that was at the pro day. “You look at that Pro Bowl picture last year, somebody had it, the Mannings and all the Pro Bowl quarterbacks, and you see how small those guys are. Drake, I mean, he’s all of 6’4” and he’s big. I see him still getting there upper body-wise; that’s where he looks a little young, but he’s got a huge frame, and he can throw the hell out of the ball down the field. His arm strength, that’s a huge plus, especially if he goes somewhere like New England, out there late in the year.”

I then mentioned to this coach a throw that Maye made when he rolled right and seemed to throw with his feet off the ground, generating a ton of velocity while in a very imperfect body position. “He’s just a good all-around athlete,” the coach says. “That shouldn’t shock anybody, if you look at his family history. And you’re right, he’s got that spatial awareness, this depth perception, where it doesn’t have to be perfect.”

And it wasn’t perfect, to be sure. There were things to pick apart. But there’s also a belief from the NFL combine that this is a quarterback who will figure it out. In Indianapolis, he was at the top of the quarterback group in how he interviewed with teams, and also in how he interacted with other players from all walks, and naturally became a leader in that setting.

So what the pro day showed, sans a couple hiccups that led to ridiculous social-media-driven conclusions, is there’s a lot to work with—and that the best is probably yet to come.

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You can give Jayden Daniels similar marks for his work the day before in Baton Rouge. His pro day was probably the most heavily attended workout of this draft cycle by the top guys—general managers and head coaches—and not just because of Daniels. There were also the two receivers (Malik Nabers and Brian Thomas Jr.) likely to go inside the top half of the first round.

Like Maye, Daniels checked all the boxes to show the decision-makers in attendance that everything they saw on tape translated in a live setting.

“He looked good,” an offensive coordinator in attendance says. “He showed his fluidity and athleticism. The mid- to short-range accuracy is really easy for him. … I feel like every one of these pro days is a little bit different. They didn’t get dramatic in the routes they ran with these guys. He handled it all well. It solidified him as one of the first two picks in the draft.”

The coordinator then added, “It was eerily similar to C.J. [Stroud’s] pro day, just in his mechanics, the rhythm of it.”

The imperfections came down the field, with two receivers that run 40-yard dashes in the 4.3s adjusting a bit while the ball was in the air.

“I didn’t think the workout just blew anyone away,” says an NFC exec. “There was some mechanical stuff that didn’t look real clean. I thought the deep ball was kind of all over the place. When he sets his feet and he’s balanced, there’s really a good arm there. It’s a really natural stroke. But he missed some throws, some locations … What gives you a little pause is maybe he’s not as polished as a thrower as you maybe would have thought.”

The exec added that it would have been nice to have gotten a confirmed 40 time on Daniels, given how important his breakaway ability in the run game is to his total package, but it’s hard to fault the Heisman winner for not running. Maye, Caleb Williams, J.J. McCarthy and Bo Nix didn’t run one, either, at the combine or their respective pro days. But Michael Penix Jr. did, given his medical questions.

So Daniels, at least for now, is the presumptive favorite to be the No. 2 pick, behind Williams, with his combination of that natural throwing ability and freakish athleticism making him a little different than the other top guys in the class.

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One coach who attended McCarthy’s pro day: “The spiral is tight, the rotation is there, he drove the ball more than Caleb did.” / Junfu Han / USA TODAY NETWORK

The guy who seems to have gained the most ground among the top quarterbacks in pro days was, indeed, Michigan’s J.J. McCarthy. If we’re breaking down the top six quarterbacks in this draft class, and drilling down on how they threw it—the Wolverines’ two-year starter is the guy who had the cleanest pro day throwing for scouts. That he’d already thrown at the combine and improved on that performance only helped him.

“J.J.’s got more arm than I thought from what I saw on tape,” says one coach who went to McCarthy’s pro day, as well as Williams’s workout. “It was pretty impressive. Every ball wasn’t on the face mask, some were behind guys a little, and Caleb’s more naturally accurate. But, man, he showed off his arm. There was one where he was moving away from internal pressure, drifting left, and throwing [right] to the field—wow. The spiral is tight, the rotation is there, he drove the ball more than Caleb did.”

That said, there’s a real split in opinion on McCarthy.

As we mentioned, Williams, Daniels and Maye really just confirmed what most thought of them—and solidified themselves as top-of-the-draft selections. I’m not sure Nix changed many people’s minds, either. There are teams that see him as a high-end backup. Others think there’s a little more than that. As for South Carolina’s Spencer Rattler, he had a nice couple months, too, where some see him neck and neck with Nix.

Penix is in a different category because the medical piece of his evaluation is so important. One exec told me his team’s medical grade on the Heisman finalist “wasn’t awful” but gave the decision makers a lot to work through. I’d imagine most teams feel that way. But Penix running the 40 in the 4.5s (I talked to three scouts who had him at 4.53, 4.56 and 4.56) helped his cause, showing his two torn ACLs haven’t robbed him of the ability to run fast.

And so now we move on to the next phase of the process for these guys. Some teams are jumping into private workouts. The Vikings have already done one with McCarthy and plan to do one with Maye and two or three others. The Giants have lined up a bunch, too, and had a large group meet with Penix on Friday morning, the day after Penix’s pro day in Seattle. Other teams are going into top-30  visits—where prospects go to team facilities to interview, take physicals, etc. (they’re called 30 visits because each team can meet with up to 30 players). 

After that? Well, that’s about it. We’re getting closer to knowing where these guys are going to get drafted.

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What’s convinced me to get behind the new kickoff rule, and be open-minded about it, is the amount of time the special teams coaches put into it. And talking to New Orleans Saints special teams coach Darren Rizzi, who captained the effort alongside the Dallas Cowboys’ John Fassel and Chicago Bears’ Richard Hightower—on Friday after he’d had a couple days to digest everything—it was pretty clear that the work the larger group invested was most satisfying to him.

It wasn’t easy to get it passed, to be sure. Last Monday night, as commissioner Roger Goodell went to work to try and get the final votes, the kickoff was still four or five votes shy of the 24 needed to pass. That it’s going on as a one-year trial helped to get proponents a lot more than just that—in the end, 29 teams voted yes, with the San Francisco 49ers, Green Bay Packers and Las Vegas Raiders the lone dissenters.

It also will take some getting used to, seeing the kicker by himself at his own 35-yard line, the coverage team at the opponent’s 40, nine or 10 guys from the return team between the 35 and 30, and one or two return men deep.

But in the end, the new rule accomplished what the special teams coaches wanted, which is to try and a) make the kickoff return an exciting play again and b) make it sustainable long-term.

“It was a proud moment when that vote went through; I’m not going to lie,” Rizzi says. “Me and Bones [Fassel], we’re sitting there, and they voted on it, and it went through, it was like, Man, we have a chance here to change the game forever, not only at our level, but a lot of levels.Now, it’s on us. It’s on the special teams coaches to get it right and to make sure this thing works.”

With that in mind, I figured we’d give you a little bit from Rizzi on what’s behind him, and the rest of the special teams coaches, and what’s ahead for them, too.

• The hardest part to get people to agree to was exactly what you’d expect—how different the play looked. “When you’re presenting something totally radical, totally new and totally different to everybody, to a bunch of old school football guys, to get everybody on the same page is really hard,” Rizzi says. “The second part of that is after we met, once we settled on the framework of a proposal, there’s a lot of ideas that started floating.” 

So the guys leading the effort had to synthesize everything, with the NFL’s Troy Vincent and Jeff Miller giving the coaches a blank canvas, and a mandate to make the play safer and more exciting. Suffice it to say, it took a lot of work around these guys’ day jobs to settle on the template the XFL established last spring, then tweak it to everyone’s liking.

• The biggest changes to the XFL proposal were made to the return team’s setup zone—rather than having 10 guys on a line, they allowed for two returners, rather than just one, and required just seven guys on that line, with two to three free to be up to five yards behind them. In the end, the tweaking and adjusting was pretty constant, and that went right into last week, when they set the touchback for a ball getting to the end zone on the fly, and downed there, at the 30, thinking taking it to the 35, as had been proposed, was too punitive.

“The premise of the arguments behind it is some of the coaches felt like, Alright, listen, if I’m winning at the end of the game, I’m up by a couple scores, and there’s a couple minutes left and I got to kick off, maybe I don’t want to cover a kick. Maybe I’m O.K. with them getting the ball at the 30. Maybe I’m okay kicking the ball for a touchback,” Rizzi says. “They just felt like the 35 might be too punitive.”

• I asked Rizzi what he thinks this will look like a month or two into the 2024 season. His prediction: By then, a lot of the kinks will be worked out.

“I think a month into the season you’re going to see a lot more balls being returned,” he says. “I think you’re going to see the injury rates go down, especially with the high-speed collisions and the mistimed injuries. And I think it’s going to be one of those things where when people were used to going to the bathroom or all that when the kickoff was on, now it’s going to be one of those, S---, I gotta watch this.”

• As for what wound up being important to the larger group of 55, or so, special teams coaches who met in Indianapolis at the combine? The answer, for Rizzi, was simple, too. They wanted the play resurrected after years of the league burying it.

“It was a lot of the older veteran coaches saying to the younger coaches, This play used to be extremely relevant,” Rizzi says.“This play used to be 80% return rate. Eight, or nine, out of every 10 kickoffs were being returned. Now we’re down to two out of 10. It was really important for a lot of the veteran coaches, and for the younger guys to understand, Let’s make this play relevant again.”

That made changing the rule a priority to Rizzi. As he approached it, and the owners discussed it in their meetings last week, there was a pretty funny moment. As Rizzi went over the ins and outs of the rule, Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie said, “Coach, don’t you think the fourth-and-20 proposal [as a substitute for an onside kick] would be a great compliment to this?” Rizzi responded, “Mr. Lurie, are you sure you want me to answer that question?”

Those in the room laughed, and then Lurie, smiling, asked him again. Rizzi explained his issues with the proposal, which was shot down soon thereafter. Jokes aside, it was a good moment for a respected special teams coach to feel heard in a room full of some of the sport’s power brokers. And the cool thing is special teams coaches could feel like they were listened to. Which is a good reason for all of us to give this thing a shot.

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Scouts are comparing Nabers to Chase and Waddle. / Matt Pendleton-USA TODAY Sports

Nabers might not be drafted before Marvin Harrison Jr., but it is true that teams are pretty hot on him. I’ve said for a while that NFL people view Harrison as the best receiver prospect since 2011. And if you remember, in 2011, there were two guys like that—Julio Jones and A.J. Green. And now I’m starting to think this year is going to be similar to that year.

With Nabers I had one scout compare him to fellow LSU Tiger Ja’Marr Chase. Another compared him to Dolphins star Jaylen Waddle. That, to me, didn’t seem like a fit because I didn’t see Chase and Waddle as similar since Chase’s game is power and Waddle’s is speed. But the commonality the two share—in how each is elite after the catch—is the thread I needed to pull on.

It seems wild that a guy might combine Chase’s power and Waddle’s speed. Nabers might do that. Chase’s playing strength is off the charts. Nabers might not be quite there, but he’s not far off. He did 15 reps on the bench at 225 pounds, and, at 6’ and 199 lbs., came in at the same height as Chase did pre-draft, and was just two pounds lighter. And after a 4.35 in the 40 at his pro day, you can say his speed is right where Waddle’s is (Waddle, for the record, didn’t run a 40 in the run-up to the 2021 draft).

All this makes Nabers a different type of receiver than the bigger, more polished Harrison.

“He’s really f---ing good,” says one AFC exec of Nabers. “Marvin’s such a good route runner, has such good hands, was such a playmaker when [Ohio State] needed him to be. But Nabers is violent, explosive and dynamic.”

So the choice between the two could come down to which type of receiver you want—with Harrison basically what a No. 1 receiver always has been, a taller and more imposing route runner. Or, a team could go with Nabers, who is an open-field monster.

I still think Harrison is the best receiver in this draft class. But, as the scout above said, that doesn’t mean the other guy isn’t really good. And for what it’s worth, Nabers’s competitiveness has really come out meeting with teams, and talking about wanting to be the first receiver off the board. Which makes it kind of interesting that he ran the 40 a second time at his pro day after logging the 4.35, something that might’ve been taken as a message sent.

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The Haason Reddick trade was a good example of two teams working together with the same sort of philosophy. And that makes plenty of sense, since the two general managers that negotiated it—the Philadelphia Eagles’ Howie Roseman and the New York Jets’ Joe Douglas—won a championship in Philadelphia.

In both cases, money was a factor.

For the Eagles, it was managing a situation where they had two edge rushers going into contract years—Reddick and Josh Sweat—and a desire to upgrade the position long term, with 2023 first-rounder Nolan Smith and 15-year veteran Brandon Graham in the mix. Bottom line: Reddick and Sweat weren’t coming back at the combined $31 million they were due in 2024. So Philly gave both permission to seek trades to assess their own options, and landed Jets rusher Bryce Huff at $17 million per year in free agency to replace one of them.

Meanwhile, the Jets have had a good rotation of edge rushers around star three-technique tackle Quinnen Williams, with former first-rounders Jermaine Johnson and Will McDonald IV, plus veteran John Franklin-Myers, which made paying Huff trickier for them than others.

So Philly renegotiated Sweat’s deal, and dealt off a 29-year-old with one year left on his deal while acquiring a 25-year-old for the next three years, getting a 2026 third-round pick that can become a second. And the win-now Jets get a one-year answer to replace Huff in the rotation, one that won’t affect other negotiations, and a guy who should be motivated for his next payday. If he plays well, and does get paid, then the Jets could get a third-round compensation pick in2026.

Which makes this trade good for everyone, with teams that have philosophical similarities in acquiring, and paying, this particular position.

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I love Jadeveon Clowney’s business acumen. I was there in 2014 for Clowney’s NFL debut, when the No. 1 pick in that April’s draft stepped on a seam on the NRG Stadium field, and his knee exploded. Clowney had microfracture surgery that month, with NFL folks saying the injury robbed a freak athlete of just enough of the explosiveness that made him a college supernova to lower his NFL ceiling a bit.

Yet, here we are, a decade later, and Clowney has charted his own path. The timeline …

• He made more than $35 million in five years as a Houston Texan, then was franchised in 2019. He declined to sign the tender, and was traded Aug. 31 to the Seattle Seahawks. The Seahawks and Texans wound up splitting the tab for the $15 million he’d make over his only season in Seattle.

• The next year, his market wasn’t as hot as he, or his camp, might’ve hoped, so he waited. And waited. And waited. One of his old coaches from Houston, Mike Vrabel, signed him for the year for $12 million on Sept. 8. So for the second consecutive year, he put no training camp mileage on his body.

• He signed contracts the next two offseasons with the Cleveland Browns, one in April 2021, the next in May ’22, and made more than $17 million over those two years.

• Clowney then did an incentive-laden deal with the Baltimore Ravens last August, missing camp off for the third time in five years, and made a tick more than $4 million for the season, which ended for the AFC’s top seed in the conference title game.

Clowney’s career earnings are now more than $85 million. And last week, he did a two-year, $20 million deal, with another $4 million in incentives, with his hometown Carolina Panthers that’ll put him up into nine figures over his NFL career. And he’s done it his way, on his terms—after having his football mortality flash before his eyes on his first gameday as a professional.

Given what he went through, it’s not hard to see why he’s operated the way he has, and has used the sport before allowing it to use him more than it already had.

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The Rashee Rice thing still has to play out. And we’ll see where it goes. But it’s not looking good for the Chiefs’ promising young receiver, who’s well-liked and had a great rookie year.

What we know now is that a Corvette and a Lamborghini speeding on a Dallas highway early Saturday evening caused a major multivehicle accident and that, per the Dallas Morning News, one of the involved cars was either registered to or leased by Rice. Those in the two speeding cars fled the scene on foot. Two drivers at the scene were treated for minor injuries, according to the Morning News, while another two were taken to the hospital with injuries characterized as minor.

Obviously, it’s great that there wasn’t a worse outcome. But that doesn’t change the seriousness of the crime—apparent street racing on a highway, causing a major accident, and then fleeing.

It’s also mind-boggling how this keeps happening with football players. Prosecutors contended that ex-Raiders receiver Henry Ruggs was going 156 mph just before his car collided with another and killed 23-year-old Tina Tintor in 2021. Two summers ago, then-Cardinals receiver Marquise “Hollywood” Brown (now a Chief) was arrested for going 126 mph. Last summer, Vikings rookie Jordan Addison was arrested after being clocked at 140 mph. And then there was the widespread drag-racing problem at Georgia that cost a recruiting staffer her life, with Eagles DL Jalen Carter involved in the race that led to that death.

Obviously, not all of these incidents are the same. Ruggs wasn’t racing, but was drunk for his accident, which is why he was sentenced to three to10 years in prison. Other infractions were less serious. But putting them together, you can see the problem—young guys with new money buying fast cars, and letting loose.

This isn’t a football problem. It’s a public safety problem. And if the NFL is going to do something about it, either by making an example of Rice (if this is what it looks like it is) or strengthening certain aspects of the personal conduct policy, I’d have no problem with that.

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Listen to Commanders coach Dan Quinn talk about signing Bobby Wagner, and you’ll learn a little about how he plans to build his team. Quinn spoke with Pat Kirwan on Sirius XM NFL Radio last week, and outlined his reasoning for bringing in the guy he coached in two Super Bowls, nearly a decade ago, and it was all there for everyone to see.

Check it out …

“He’s all that I love about football,” Quinn told Kirwan. “He’s a tackler, he’s aggressive, he’s tough, he’s smart. He takes care of himself. And what I’m hopeful to see, and I’m certain it’ll happen, is he’s a multiplier, Wags is. This is how the standard is. This is how I operate. This is the process to go through. If you were a young linebacker being around somebody, this is the exact type of linebacker you’d want to be around, or even defensive ballplayer.

“Seeing that standard of how we operate, I thought that was really important, so that’s why I’m so fired up about getting him here.”

And as for how it’ll happen, Quinn continued that he can’t wait to get the early start—the Commanders get going Tuesday—that’s afforded to new coaches, so a guy such as Wagner can get around the others and start to set the aforementioned standard. 

“More than anything, how does this connection with the team take place, how do you mesh them?” Quinn said. “Now, there’s some mentoring that can take place—This is how we’ll do things, this is what you need to do.”

More than anything, it’s a good example of how Quinn knows that he’ll need players that can serve as den leaders in the mix, because the way a teammate’s example resonates is a little different than when direction comes from a coach. To that end, it’s no shock to see Wagner joined by guys such as center Tyler Biasdasz, DEs Dorance Armstrong and Dante Fowler, CB Noah Igbinoghene, and WR Olamide Zaccheaus—all of whom Quinn was around in either Atlanta, Dallas or both—to give the new coach a good crew of messengers for his program.

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We’re going to fire through the quick-hitters as fast as we can this week. And here they come …

• I like the New England Patriots’ approach of sending an outsized group on the road to do the quarterback scouting. By all accounts I’ve gotten, it was really good for chemistry between reworked scouting and coaching staffs, and gets a lot of eyes, and ears, on the prospects. It’s also a solid sign that a place that has been, to great success, pretty siloed off operationally will be more (apologies for the buzz term) collaborative going forward, which I think is coach Jerod Mayo and GM Eliot Wolf’s intent.

• While we’re there, it’s wild that the Patriots wouldn’t just go through a legit search process in January to either install Wolf, or someone else, as the team’s new GM. Those there believe he’s earned the job. So, ahead of a vitally important offseason for the franchise, it would have made sense for ownership to affirm that.

• The idea of a Zeke Elliott reunion in Dallas is fun, but I’d expect the Cowboys to address their running back needs in the draft. And, really, if you look, Dallas has pretty much always gotten its best production (Elliott, DeMarco Murray, Tony Pollard, et al) at that position from guys on rookie contracts. So it makes sense to go back to that well for the Joneses.

• The Brandon Aiyuk negotiation won’t be easy for the San Francisco 49ers. And I wonder what they do when teams start sniffing around with trade offers as we get closer to the draft.

• Los Angeles Chargers coach Jim Harbaugh comes off as giddy to be back in the NFL. Listening to him talk, and watching the way he carried himself, in Orlando last week was so different than where he was at the end in San Francisco. The Chargers are going to be fun to follow in the fall. And I like the idea of J.K. Dobbins reuniting with Gus Edwards and Greg Roman, perhaps with Harbaugh’s running back at Michigan, Blake Corum, on the way in a few weeks.

• I think, among the available free agents right now, I’d probably take Justin Simmons first. He makes sense as a signing for a lot of teams, and maybe most so for Philly—which has two coaches—Vic Fangio and Christian Parker—who Simmons has worked closely with, and a hole at the position that’s been tough for the Eagles to fill the past few years.

• The Christmas Day thing is a pretty unnecessary display of greed by the league and its owners. To make four teams, and I’m going to assume the NFL will intend to have contenders in those broadcast windows, in a spot to play three games in just 11 days on the doorstep of the playoffs only makes sense in one way, and we all know what way that is.

• While we’re there, the NFLPA was given no heads up about the NFL’s plans for two Christmas Day games on a Wednesday.

• I still think the Los Angeles Rams are the best landing spot for Jets QB Zach Wilson.

• I believe Sean Payton when he says he’s comfortable going forward with Jarrett Stidham as his starting quarterback, if that’s how the chips fall. I’d also say this—I’m not sure Payton will ever fully get over getting jumped in the 2017 draft for Patrick Mahomes by Andy Reid and the Chiefs. And so if there’s someone in the class he loves like he did Mahomes, I wouldn’t be surprised at all if he and the Broncos got pretty aggressive about going up to get whoever that is. Stay tuned.