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Drake Maye didn’t inspire a ton of confidence during his rookie season with the Patriots, but he’s emerged as one of the league’s biggest rising stars while leading the team to the Super Bowl during his sophomore campaign. He showed plenty of promise in college before New England scooped him up with the third pick in the draft, but one random dude had significantly less evidence to work with when he correctly predicted the QB had a very bright future ahead of him as a nine-year-old.
Most people who end up making a living as a professional athlete started playing the sport they turned into a livelihood from a very young age, and that was the case with Drake Maye.
Two of his older brothers, Luke and Cole, won national championships in 2017 while respectively playing basketball at North Carolina and baseball at Florida, but Drake turned his attention to football before making a name for himself as a four-star prospect at Myers Park High School in Charlotte, North Carolina.
He followed in Luke’s footsteps while spending three years with the Tar Heels, and he was the third quarterback selected in the same slot in the 2024 NFL Draft after the Bears opted for Caleb Williams with the first overall pick before Jayden Daniels went to the Commanders with the second.
Maye bounced back from a disappointing rookie campaign where he posted a 3-9 record as a starter by going 14-3 and helping the Patriots return to the Super Bowl during Mike Vrabel’s first year at the helm. Some people might have been surprised by that turnaround, but that’s probably not the case with one guy who had some very high praise while watching him do his thing close to 15 years ago.
A random fan knew Drake Maye was special while praising his skills as a nine-year-old in a tweet from 2012
Drake Maye was six years old when he convinced his parents to let him swap flag football for the tackle variety, and he spent his childhood honing his talents while playing in Junior Eagles Football Association games at SouthLake Christian Academy in Charlotte.
It doesn’t appear that any footage from his younger days has made its way onto the internet. However, we do have some insight into how dominant he was when he was still in elementary school courtesy of a guy named Justin Farkas, who described him as “the best athlete I’ve ever seen” after watching the nine-year-old run circles around the older kids he was playing against in August 2012.
Holy crap Drake Maye is the best athlete I’ve ever seen. Playing up a league and still the best in the league
— Justin Farkas (@farkasaurus) August 25, 2012
One person who actually got the chance to play against him back in the day confirmed he was a force to be reckoned with at the time, saying it was like trying to defend Christian McCaffery during his time at Stanford.
It’s safe to say he lived up to the hype.