Drake Maye injury after questionable hit immediately validates Patriots' trade deadline

Drake Maye left the New England Patriots' Week 10 game in Munich against the Detroit Lions in the first quarter after suffering an ankle injury following a sack from Aidan Hutchinson (who subsequently injured himself while celebrating and left the game as well). The hit itself was questionable and, in the minds of most Patriots fans, dirty. By the NFL rulebook, it certainly looked like it was a hip-drop tackle that wasn't called by the officials as Hutchinson chased Maye down coming off the edge.

But Maye hobbled to the sideline and to the locker room soon after, making way for backup Tommy DeVito to take over the offense. Needless to say, the early returns on that for the Patriots were not exactly what Mike Vrabel and fans were looking for. However, seeing this team completely drop off immediately without Maye on the field paints what was an eventless trade deadling for New England — and ultimately shows that Vrabel and general manager Eliot Wolf made the right call.

Drake Maye injury paints Patriots' quiet trade deadline in a good, new light

Coming out of the trade deadline, there were legitimate questions about why the Patriots stood pat. Some of that reasoning was apparent. New England already traded its 2028 first-round pick and a 2027 fifth-round pick to Philadelphia in the A.J. Brown trade, meaning there was always going to be a hesitancy from the front office to deal more draft capital. Even still, though, the Patriots are a team currently in playoff position, so it would've stood to reason to see some efforts made to improve the roster.

The immediate results with Maye off the field for the New England offense, however, might simply show the real reason why not making any deals at the deadline was not only sensible but also the proper course of action for this franchise: This roster isn't nearly close enough right now.

Obviously, the majority of teams in the NFL would be in a horrendous spot if they had to experience a drop-off at quarterback like the Patriots going from Maye to DeVito. At the same time, this is also a season in which we've seen the Seahawks survive Sam Darnold's injury with Drew Lock, the Vikings weather subpart quarterback play all year long, and several other teams turn to backups and simply get through it.

Maybe the Lions aren't the best benchmark to measure this against as a playoff team in their own right, but the Patriots going to DeVito looked immediately problematic. And the difference between New England and teams like the Seahawks or Vikings is that the rest of the roster simply isn't what it needs to be to keep this team afloat. They don't have the offensive line, the offensive weapons or even the defense to be able to survive it.

Subsequently, if the Patriots recognize or believe that internally, why would they exhaust draft capital in order to add to this roster? This team isn't one player away from that changing. They have serious work still to do in order to fill things out around Maye (when healthy) to make their Super Bowl appearance more than just a schedule-related endeavor. They were better off holding onto the picks they still have rather than panicking and overextending themselves with resources.

The A.J. Browns trade and Romeo Doubs signing loom large in Patriots' downturn

Particularly with how the Pats were manhandled by Seattle in the Super Bowl to end last season, it was obvious that they needed roster improvements. And to Wolf and the front office's credit, they made aggressive efforts to do just that, particularly to help Drake Maye further his development as one of the league's best young passers.

The big problem is that their most aggressive moves have come up empty this season. Trading for Brown was supposed to be a boon for the offense, but he's been A. injured and B. ineffective when on the field. It looks like Philadelphia might've fleeced the Patriots in that trade. To make matters worse, though, New England also inked Romeo Doubs to a four-year, $68 million deal in free agency to further upgrade the receiving corps, and he's been equally unavailable and ineffective in his half season with the Pats.

One could make the argument that the Patriots and the offense would be better off had they just kept Stefon Diggs in the building and used either their draft capital or cap space elsewhere on the roster than how they ultimately ended up using it.

When a team whiffs so largely in the offseason when the moves are meant to bring about meaningful overall improvements, it can hamstring them. Though it's been spotty at times this season, Maye has helped to cover up a lot of the warts that still exist — and one could argue a lot of his mistakes are because he's trying to put the Patriots on his back. But with Maye out of the lineup, it becomes clear just how much of a pig he's putting makeup on.

And in the end, when that was the case lying underneath the surface all along, standing pat at the trade deadline and keeping an eye closely on the future seems like the prudent decision for New England.

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