As Patriots fail to overcome loss of A.J. Brown, Drake Maye admits: ‘I just stopped being patient’

SEATTLE — In the final four minutes of the 2026 NFL season's opening game, Drake Maye had already scrambled to his right to convert on fourth down.

He'd already found veteran receiver Mack Hollins 11 yards underneath for another fourth down.

And Maye had kept the series alive on third-and-1 with still another fake handoff and wheel around his left to pick up 6 yards.

So when the New England Patriots faced third-and-5 from the Seattle Seahawks ' 16-yard line with 26 seconds to play, down 3, Maye knew logically that all he needed to do was not turn the ball over. He knew logically that he should try to move the chains but try even harder to maintain the possession and chance to send the game to overtime with a chip-shot field goal. Instead the playmaker in him, that superhero tendency quarterbacks so often have to fight, threatened to overtake logic.

Veteran edge rusher DeMarcus Lawrence swarmed as Maye began to backtrack from the pocket, and Maye saw Hollins — that same Hollins who had cashed in on fourth-and-9 minutes earlier — so he risked a prayer to the end zone.

With pressure in Maye's face, and an off-platform throw sapping some of his normal strength, the ball began its downward arc short of Hollins.

For the third time on Wednesday night, a Seahawks defender rather than a Patriots teammate proved in better position to make the catch.

Seahawks cornerback Josh Jobe jumped the route and tapped each of his feet in the end zone as Hollins leapt behind him.

"It was something where we had a certain protection on it and were cutting and was trying to get rid of it and realized Mack was in the back there in the back and didn't put enough on it to get it out," Maye said after the Patriots' 13-10 loss. "It was just unacceptable. We had a chance to send it to overtime at the worst and the only thing you [can't] do is turn the ball over.

An erosion of the Patriots' second-half patience allowed Seattle to score 13 unanswered points after New England had built a slow but steady 10-0 lead. A drastic momentum swing in the third quarter carried the Seahawks from a team struggling to play complementary football after a hip injury limited quarterback Sam Darnold to one series … to a firing-on-all-cylinders team sandwiching a YAC-heavy touchdown between two takeaways.

Maye was hardly responsible for all of the swing: His stat line won't fully capture his receivers' drops, the pressure his offensive line began to allow, nor the 41 yards after the catch his defensive teammates ceded to Seahawks receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba on the touchdown between Maye's initial two interception drives.

But Maye's job as quarterback isn't to blame the loss of A.J. Brown (ankle) nor the dip in his protection as the game progressed. Maye's job isn't to publicly question whether offseason acquisition Romeo Doubs executed assignments as his quarterback intended nor whether Hollins should have batted away that last pass to ensure that if Hollins didn't catch it, nobody did.

So Maye stood at the postgame podium after falling four points short of a road upset and blamed himself for the second-half unraveling.

"I thought we had the game under control," the Patriots' third-year quarterback said. "I thought we had a good plan to try to start chipping away and be patient and, yeah, lost patience and it cost us.

"[I] realize it's a long season. But at the same time, you can't have those and it's unacceptable."

Patriots teammates defended their quarterback.

"If you haven't made a mistake in a football game, you either haven't played enough games or you're playing a video game," Hollins said. "He's a hell of a player. He's going to make more plays."

Seahawks showed more patience than Patriots in their second-half comeback

The Patriots didn't arrive in Seattle only as oddsmaker underdogs coming to watch the Seahawks unveil the banner from a Super Bowl game that seven months ago New England lost.

They also arrived in Seattle trying to rebound from a Super Bowl loss better than the 45% of post-1999 Super Bowl losers who haven't even made the playoffs, much less returned to the Super Bowl, the next year.

New England arrived to the 2026 season with a tougher schedule than last year's slate, in which 14 of its 17 regular-season games came against teams who would not advance to the playoffs. This year, they'll play nine games against 2025 playoff teams.

Wednesday night offered a chance to move past a spring of off-field headlines and a plethora of questions about how legitimate the 2025 Patriots, who beat a QB2-led Denver Broncos team in the AFC championship, were. This was a chance to show what their June 1 acquisition of Brown meant for their receiver room; a chance to show how their offensive line health and lineup had stabilized since the Super Bowl.

In the first half, Maye led that charge. The strategic quick game and checkdowns weren't as fun or gaudy as the deep balls that helped Maye to MVP runner-up last season. But they were effective to neutralize a talented rushing unit like Seattle's.

So the Patriots redefined success as avoiding three-and-outs, hoping staying on the field longer would eventually create opportunity. Seattle's defense?

"We're like, 'OK, we got to stay patient,'" safety Julian Love said. "We can't chase plays because when they throw it to us, we just got to catch it. … It's tough to do when you feel like you're down 10-0, 'I'm going to go chase this play.' But us, we're like, 'All right. Let the game come to you.'"

Brown had proven a reliable safety net for Maye in the first half of the receiver's first game as a Patriots. On third-and-4 in the second quarter, he muscled for 5 yards near the right sideline. On third-and-2, he drew a 34-yard defensive pass interference call off a flea-flicker that set up the Patriots' first score one play later.

Brown would come back with a 14-yard slant on third-and-3 against Seahawks cornerback Nehemiah Pritchett as Maye faced pressure. But when, 90 seconds into the third quarter, an awkward tackle sent Brown to the blue medical tent and then the tunnel for X-rays, the collective comfort taking checkdowns and awaiting big plays dissipated.

A field goal and three-and-out were unideal but manageable. Then came the deep pass Maye intended for Doubs down the left sideline, that instead was tipped by the Seahawks' Rodney Thomas and intercepted by Pritchett, who said he read Maye's eyes.

"I tried to force one down the sideline to Romeo …" Maye said. "Just stopped being patient."

Patience became even more of a challenge when the Seahawks, quarterbacked by Drew Lock , turned the gifted possession into their first touchdown drive of the game.

After Doubs dropped a pass on second-and-14, Maye dropped back and fired up the middle of the field toward receiver Demario Douglas in traffic.

Love jumped the route for an interception, knocking Maye off his process while freeing his own quarterback to play conservatively even before Jobe brought the takeaway count to three.

"I know what kind of defense we have," Lock told Yahoo Sports. "I know what playmakers we have on our side of the ball. It's just, take care of it and don't give it to them in good field position and give them easy points. Make it a long game, see who's going to pull it out at the end and take care of the ball is my main thing.

"And then sure enough, the classic rule of whoever wins the turnover battle is going to win the game, ends up playing out."

Hollins: 'You either move past it or you go 0-17. I'd rather move past it'

Shortly after nine o'clock in Seattle, and midnight in New England, Maye exited the Patriots' visiting locker room rolling his black backpack atop his black Away rollerboard suitcase. A dinner buffet line for bus-bound players awaited. Maye bypassed it, dropping his bags near the end of the line and heading toward a metal railing.

As he hunched over it, grasping the railing with each of his hands, he held court with the family members who'd traveled to support him. Maye's wife, Ann Michael, and father, former UNC quarterback Mark, stood across the railing to his left. Maye's three older brothers — Luke, Cole and Beau — towered to his right. The quarterback brushed his hand through his hair at some points in the conversation, bowing his head at others.

Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel walked past, shaking the four visiting Maye men's hands, giving Ann Michael a brief hug and slapping his quarterback on the back.

Conversation was steady if not jovial as Maye processed his first three-interception game across 30 regular-season outings and four playoff games. Vrabel had stated both that "you can't throw three interceptions" and also that "Drake knows that."

There was a sense the Patriots know what they need to do next even if questions linger on how they will do it and how soon Brown will rejoin them.

So as the Patriots hovered between the end of Wednesday in Seattle and beginning of Thursday in New England, Maye hovered between the lingering disappointment and the next-play, next-game mentality.

The Patriots were still competitive in the loss, earning 19 first downs and 277 net yards to the Seahawks' 13 and 285, respectively. Maye had still amassed 225 yards from scrimmage, including 47 rushing on seven carries, even if his second-half passing amounted to 13-of-21 for 110 yards, no scores and three interceptions.

At least 16 more games await on the Patriots' schedule.

"You either move past it or you go 0-17," Hollins said. "I'd rather move past it."

Three more 2025 playoff teams loom next on the schedule in the Pittsburgh Steelers , Jacksonville Jaguars and Buffalo Bills .

With Brown's return timeline in question, patience will continue to prove key.

"These guys are here for me," Maye said. "I think they've done a great job in supporting me and have had my back. I've got to earn their trust. I know I have their trust, but I got to keep on putting better football out there. I think it's Week 1 but at the same time, there's a full season ahead but you got to get this going early.

"We got to start off on the right foot. I know what we had last year, but we got a new season, a new team, and we need to build that."