Plus, fan confidence ticks back up.
In our latest Pats Pulpit Reacts survey, we wanted to see your reaction to Drake Maye earning the starting job, your thoughts on the offensive line, and continued our weekly confidence tracker.
When we asked last week, 40 percent of voters said they wanted to see Drake Maye take over as the New England Patriots’ starting quarterback at some point within the next month, including 23 percent of voters who wanted him to start against the Miami Dolphins.
Now that Maye has earned the starting job, 44 percent of Patriots fans answered this week that this would be the right decision. This continues the trend of an increasing number of Patriots fans ready to see Maye on the field since the preseason, but over half of fans are still uncomfortable with the decision.
Part of that discomfort may stem from the offensive line, a group that is ranked at or near the bottom of the league in pass protection. The unit saw shifting for the fifth consecutive week against Miami, with Vederian Lowe and Michael Jordan returning from injury on the left side and Michael Onwenu kicking inside to guard on the right. With all five of those players healthy, Week 6 will mark the first time this season the Patriots will start the same group in consecutive weeks.
Still, that has not done much to assuage Patriots fans. A plurality of respondents, 48 percent, said they had no change in their opinion of the line after Week 5. About a quarter of fans (26 percent) said they felt a little better, while 14 percent said they felt a lot worse. Eleven percent said they felt a bit worse about the group, and just one percent said they felt a lot better.
With Drake Maye set to start his first game, the number of Patriots fans confidence in the team’s direction ticked up from 28 percent to 34 percent. That’s the first upward movement in this weekly confidence indicator since the team’s Week 1 win against the Bengals, their lone victory this season.
The Patriots take on the Houston Texans this Sunday at 1 p.m. ET. New England enters the contest as 6.5-point underdogs, according to FanDuel.