Play Drake Maye.

Start Drake Maye.

It’s starting to dominate the thinking of New England Patriots fans. It almost seems like those are the first words some fans utter when they wake up in the morning.

They want to see the quarterback the team picked No. 3 overall play right away. They don’t trust the coaching staff, led by first year head coach Jerod Mayo and offensive coordinator Alex Van Pelt.

Really?

This is to remind everyone that one dart of a pass to a rookie receiver who couldn’t catch it, in the preseason, doesn’t change what Mayo likes to call “the plan.”

But we’ll see. Mac Jones got the immediate nod from Bill Belichick three years ago, and basically it was because he could throw a forward pass and his competition, Cam Newton, couldn’t. Fast forward three years later and none of them are in Foxborough, are they?

So here we are with tonight’s preseason finale (thank God) at Washington, and we’ll dissect what Maye does – or doesn’t do.

It’s a precarious thing. The Patriots went out and signed a reliable veteran in Jacoby Brissett, basically as a placeholder and teacher for Maye, who has the most talent (sorry, Joe Milton III fans).

But this hanging on every preseason play is getting out of hand. Preseason games don’t tell you anything except who may make a team’s practice squad. The schemes are vanilla, there’s no game planning, etc. It’s already well known that full price cost for them is the biggest scam going in sports.

Mayo, Van Pelt, Ben McAdoo, and T.C. McCartney, the latter three the offensive braintrust, want Maye to be ready for the,um, regular season. You know, those games that actually count. The ones teams actually watch film for and game plan for.

We could care less about what each QB’s stats are in practice. Give us a game. Give us regular season game speed.

That’s when you’ll find out about Drake Maye. Not a moment before. And it may not be this year, or the year after. Sometimes a quarterback takes two or three years to develop. Come on down, Josh Allen.

Maye is an asset, and the Patriots also want to make sure he’s protected. New England’s offensive line has two solid players on it – Mike Onwenu and center David Andrews. The rest, well, just keep rotating them around and hope for the best.

The guess here is that Maye will play after the first four games, but who really knows? The new NFL has fans demanding their team’s top QB draft picks start right away, and on some teams that makes sense. Not here. Maye can be good, but not great right away.

This is when you need the right feel. Kurt Warner had to step aside with the Giants to make way after seven games for a rookie named Eli Manning. Manning had to step aside after just a couple of games five years ago for a rookie named Daniel Jones. Well, one out of two ain’t bad.

Let things play out. Start Brissett, then if things get bogged down, sound the alarm, Maye Day, Maye Day.

But lets’s not get silly with this, OK?

Tom King may be reached at X @Telegraph_TomK, or via email at tking@nashuatelegraph.com