The Patriots have been a fantasy graveyard essentially since Tom Brady left and if you are ever starting more than one Patriot player in any given fantasy week, there’s a very good likelihood your team is going to lose.  They finished 4-13 last season which is the only good thing that happened to them as they were set up to draft a potential franchise re-orienting QB.  It’s too early to tell if Drake Maye is going to be enough to alter the current direction of the franchise, but it’s definitely a start.

To say the Pats had a disappointing season is akin to saying Tom Brady was a great QB.  It fails to accurately paint the appropriate picture.  They finished 31^st in points scored, 30^th in yards, 27^th or worse in passing TDs, INTs and passing yards and 25^th or worse in rushing yards, TDs and rushing yards-per-attempt.  Mac Jones regressed to potentially be out of the league and Rhamondre Stevenson failed to grab the mantle as a the kind of RB you can still build an offense around.  They only scored more than 21 points twice in the entire season and averaged a league-low 5.15 plays per drive.  The season wasn’t just ugly, it was an abomination.  Bill Belichick left the team after coaching for 24 seasons and everyone involved had a mixture of blood and shame on their hands.  They say victory has a 1000 fathers and defeat is an orphan.  It’s pretty safe to say that no one is going to take credit for last season.

A common baseball saying is hope springs eternal and there is no greater cause for hope than drafting a QB near the top of the NFL draft.  The Pats are hoping Maye can do for them what C.J Stroud did for the Texans last season (go from 3-13-1 to 10-7), but that might be a fool’s hope.  The Pats are a defensive team first and foremost and will look to further improve on a unit that was top-five in passing TDs allowed, first downs, rushing yards and rushing yards-per-attempt.  The injuries to edge rusher Matthew Judon and potential cornerback standout Christian Gonzales capped the ceiling of what the defense could really do, but by this coming Week 1 they will be sporting one of the most intimidating defenses in the entire league.

The Pats aren’t likely to open up the playbook and start slinging the ball and Maye might not even start as journeyman Jacoby Brissett is on his second Boston tour.  Newcomer Antonio Gibson gives the Pats two legitimate running backs who can both run and catch balls out of the backfield.  All eyes will be on sophomore Demario Douglas who followed in the classic New England tradition of not scoring any TDs.

Writer’s Season Win Prediction: 6-11

Can lack of expectations be a strength?  The best thing the Pats have going for them is that this season can’t be as bad as last season.  It was clear that Belichick had finally run out of road and the team wasn’t responding to him anymore, but that doesn’t mean new head coach Jerod Mayo is going to flourish.  It is possible to rebuild and reboot on the fly and the Pats have potentially upgraded at the most important position.  Maye looks like a game-changing talent and is already used to carrying a team with a poor offensive line and limited outside weapons.  If he looks the part of a franchise QB early on, the rest of the pieces with be exponentially easier to fit.  Maye doesn’t have much fantasy appeal out of the gate though as the Pats are not going to be an explosive offense and the other three teams in the division also boast potentially elite pass defenses.  The same was said for Stroud last season and he went largely undrafted in single QB leagues.  So it’s not impossible for Maye to dominate in Week 1, just improbable.

It is almost comical how bad the Pats have been at drafting WRs and it was the biggest hole in Belichick’s game as a talent evaluator.  He might have just left the Pats a golden farewell gift.  Demario Douglas might be undersized at 5’8’’, but what he lacks in size, he makes up for with sheer moxie.  He had a 14.6% target share with only one drop last season and while he may have lacked explosiveness (only six grabs 20+ yards), he’s going to be a PPR machine and should quickly emerge as Maye’s favorite target and safety blanket. It’s hard to take anything that happened in New England as definitive once it became clear that Mac Jones wasn’t going to fulfil his potential, so the lack of TDs from Douglas could just as likely be an outlier, but his diminutive size doesn’t inspire confidence for any routes in the back of the end zone or that could end up in a jump ball.  Regardless, Douglas’ destiny is intertwined with Maye and if you believe that Maye is going to be great from the jump, it would make sense to bet on Douglas as well.

Want to get access to Nathan’s article? You’ll need to have a SportsEthos NFL FantasyPass membership. Click here to learn more and sign up!
Premium Access Required