The Muffed Take
ADP #63Muffed: LEAN: UNDERPRICED

QB2 in 2025 on the best passing efficiency in the league (CPOE and ANY/A both #1), now with A.J. Brown added, priced QB4. The under-the-hood numbers say the price is too low.

2026 PreviewJun 15, 2026

Drake Maye 2026 Season Preview — the most efficient passer in football, at QB4

0:000:00

Your episode · 0:00

Show notes & transcript

Drake Maye led the entire NFL in completion percentage over expected and in adjusted net yards per attempt last season. He finished as the number-two fantasy quarterback. He nearly won MVP. And he's the fourth quarterback off the board. The Muffed 2026 preview on the cleanest quarterback value on this board.

The 2025 season was a sophomore explosion: seventeen games, twenty and a half points a game, QB2 in fantasy, on forty-three ninety-four passing yards, thirty-one touchdowns against just eight interceptions, plus four hundred fifty yards and four scores on the ground. The signature was a five-touchdown, thirty-two point demolition of the Jets in Week 17. But the counting stats undersell it — the efficiency is the story. His completion percentage over expected was the best in the league, plus nine. His adjusted net yards per attempt was the best in the league. He wasn't a volume QB2; he was the most accurate and efficient passer in football.

The arc is a vertical line. As a rookie in 2024 he was a thirteen-and-a-half-point quarterback finding his footing. In year two he jumped to twenty-and-a-half and the QB2 finish. That's not a fluke spike on one number — it's a young quarterback whose underlying accuracy says the leap is real, not borrowed.

Now the part that informs the call honestly. Our quarterback work says the safest fantasy floors belong to rushing quarterbacks, and Maye isn't quite that — about twenty percent of his points came from his legs, useful but short of the elite rushing-floor tier. So we won't pretend he has Lamar's structural floor. What he has instead is the thing that's hardest to fake: accuracy and efficiency that both led the league. That's a skill signal, not luck waiting to regress. The fair caution is simply that a sophomore QB2 finish isn't guaranteed to repeat, and quarterback is a position you can wait on.

The situation, per the reports, only adds to it: New England traded for A.J. Brown, giving Maye a true number-one receiver the offense lacked — and the early chemistry has been the talk of the spring. A league-best-efficiency quarterback adding an alpha receiver entering year three is an ascending asset.

The price: pick sixty-two and a half, the fourth quarterback. Verdict: LEAN — underpriced. He finished QB2 on the best passing efficiency in the league and added an alpha receiver, and he's priced behind three other quarterbacks. The counter, fairly: it's a one-quarterback-league spot you can wait on, and you're partly betting a second-year breakout repeats. But everything under the hood says it should — this is the rare case where the efficiency, not just the points, says the price is too low.

September watch: whether the accuracy holds with a new alpha in the route tree — the CPOE is the whole thesis; and the Brown chemistry, the ceiling-raiser. Your guys, every week. Next preview's queued.

Play fantasy? There's a version of this about your whole roster — build your show, free →

2025 by the numbers
Finish
QB2
PPR / game
20.7
Total PPR
352.0
Games
17
2026 ADP
#63

2025: 4,394 passing yards, 31 passing TDs, 8 INTs; 450 rushing yards on 103 carries, 4 rushing TDs (17 games)

More episodes

2025 ReviewMay 11, 2026

Drake Maye 2025 Season in Review

QB2 on the season — 17 games, 20.7 PPR/game

0:000:00

Your episode · 0:00

Show notes & transcript

Drake Maye finished 2025 as the number 2 quarterback in total PPR scoring and number 2 in PPR per game. That's not a sophomore leap — that's a full-blown ascension. Maye quarterbacked the Patriots to a 14-3 record, an AFC East title, and a Super Bowl appearance as the engine of the number 1 passing offense in football by expected points added. He was efficient. He was steady. He ran enough to give you a fantasy floor on the rare days the passing game stalled, and he played all 17 games. For a player coming off a rookie year where the questions were about supporting cast and protection, Maye answered every one of them on the field.

Now let's dig into the numbers, because the story is efficiency on real volume. Maye completed 72 percent of his throws on 492 attempts for 4,394 yards, 31 touchdowns, and just 8 picks — and his completion percentage above expectation of plus 9.1 led every qualified passer in the league. His adjusted net yards per attempt of 8.3 also ranked first among qualified starters, and his 31 passing touchdowns were third-most in the NFL. Add 450 rushing yards and 4 scores on 103 carries — roughly 26 rushing yards a game baked into the floor. And the floor was real: Maye averaged 20.7 PPR per game and only dipped below 15 once all year, in that Week 5 Buffalo win where he threw for 273 yards but didn't find the end zone. The ceiling games came in bunches too — 32.4 in the Week 17 Jets game on five passing touchdowns, plus 26-plus performances against Miami, New Orleans, and Cleveland. Steady-floor quarterbacking with genuine spike weeks, not a boom-or-bust roller coaster.

One play captured the season. Second quarter at Tampa Bay in Week 10, first and ten from the Patriots' own 28, down 7-nothing. Maye took the snap, dropped, and hit Javon Williams on a short right throw that turned into a 72-yard touchdown — worth plus 5.7 expected points added on a single snap. That's the Maye season in miniature: a clean throw, a designed concept that broke the game open, and an offense that turned average field position into seven points before the defense could blink. The number 2 fantasy quarterback finish wasn't a fluke of garbage time or a single hot month — it was 17 weeks of one of the most efficient passing seasons in football.

Want Drake Maye on your weekly show?

Build a free show around Drake Maye (and your other guys) right now — no signup. Want it in your inbox every week of the 2026 season? Drop your email once you've built it.