Two years ago, Drake Maye told people at the NFL Scouting Combine that he wasn’t Mitch Trubisky.
He was fond of the former Bears quarterback. The two wore the same No. 10 jersey at the same school, North Carolina. But that’s where the comparisons stopped.
“I think a lot of people, they analyze based off the helmet,” Maye said then. “I think we’re different players and different people. At the same time, I’m a big fan of Mitch.”
That’s as close as Maye ever got to the Bears. General manager Ryan Poles was never going to draft anyone other than Caleb Williams, whether the USC quarterback liked it or not. And if he did, the Bears were more intrigued by quarterback J.J. McCarthy than by Maye.
Williams knew then, as much as he does now, that he’ll forever be compared to the other quarterbacks drafted in his class.
Sunday, Maye became the first to stamp his ticket to the Super Bowl.
One year after No. 2 overall pick Jayden Daniels lost in the NFC championship game, Maye won a snowy slog of an AFC title game, playing through a fourth-quarter blizzard to clinch a 10-7 Patriots win against the home Broncos. Maye’s biggest play came on the ground when he kept the ball on a naked bootleg for seven yards on third-and-five with 1:57 to play.
Maye went just 10-for-21 for 86 yards in the snow, statistics that belie just how special his second season has been. He’ll likely finish second in MVP voting behind the Rams’ Matthew Stafford, who lost 31-27 to the Seahawks on Sunday night.
The Super Bowl-bound Seahawks won in a shootout when Sam Darnold, playing for his fourth team in as many years, outdueled Stafford — barely. Darnold went 25-for-36 for 346 yards, three touchdowns and a 127.8 passer rating.
Stafford finished with 374 yards and a 127.6 passer rating one week after winning at Soldier Field, but threw incomplete on the biggest play of the night. Down four and facing-fourth-and-four at the Seahawks’ 6, Rams coach Sean McVay opted to go for it with about five minutes to play. Stafford’s pass was broken up by Illinois alum Devon Witherspoon. By the time the Rams eventually got the ball back, they were at their own 7 with 25 seconds to play.
Bears fans who likely experienced a sense of schadenfreude once the Rams lost also can turn their sights on the Vikings, who let Darnold walk last year after he struggled in the playoffs following a Most Improved Player season. Darnold signed a free agent deal with the Seahawks after the Vikings decided to turn the team over to McCarthy — who went on to post a 72.6 passer rating in 10 games with the Seahawks.
Two years — and only 10 games — into his career, the No. 10 overall pick’s status as the Vikings’ franchise quarterback is very much in question. The same is true for the Falcons’ Michael Penix, the No. 8 pick, who has played just 12 career games.
The Broncos’ Bo Nix, the No. 12 pick, led his team to the No. 1 seed in the AFC before breaking his ankle in a playoff win last week. Daniels spent most of the season injured when he wasn’t fumbling the ball away to the Bears in critical moments.
Through two seasons, Williams lands no farther down than third on the continuum of 2024 draft-class quarterbacks — though his late-game heroics make him a more popular pick than Nix.
Maye, though, led the NFL with a 113.5 regular-season passer rating. Only Stafford, the Lions’ Jared Goff and the Cowboys’ Dak Prescott threw for more than his 4,394 yards.
Bears fans still jittery from the adrenaline rush of the 2025 season likely wouldn’t trade their coach and young quarterback for any such pairing in the league. The Patriots, though, are a perfect what-if proxy for the Bears, who interviewed Mike Vrabel before giving the head coaching job to Ben Johnson and could have drafted Maye to play quarterback.
Like Johnson did for the Bears, Vrabel turned the Patriots from a last-place finisher in their own division last year to the winner this season. Like the Bears, the Patriots benefited from a last-place schedule this season.
The Bears, though, fell two games short of the Super Bowl.
At 23, Maye will become the second-youngest quarterback to play in the Super Bowl, behind Dan Marino. He’s so young that he went to the last Broncos Super Bowl as a fan with his dad.
When he was in seventh grade, he went to Super Bowl 50 to watch his favorite team, the Panthers, play his current team, the Broncos, in Santa Clara, Calif., the site of this year’s game.
“Pretty cool to be full circle, going back here 10 years later,” he said.