Tom Brady famously had the circle of trust.
You remember the special corps of wide receivers who worked their way into Brady’s inner football sanctum, often pushing the bounds of their own talent to impress their exacting quarterback with diligence, work, and understanding of the offense.
Membership had its privileges, and its rewards, turning little-known prospects from Wes Welker to Julian Edelman to Chris Hogan into playoff heroes and household names.
Brady is long gone, but a quarterback’s search for a connection to his receivers never ends. Now it’s Drake Maye’s turn, and as the third-year quarterback continues to establish himself as a potentially worthy Patriots’ successor, Sunday’s comeback win in Miami got me thinking about that circle of trust. And more specifically, how Maye is beginning to build one of his own.
Maye knew going into the Miami game he would be missing many of his reliable options, with A.J. Brown, Romeo Doubs, and Mack Hollins ruled out by injury. His options got even more limited before halftime, when tight end Hunter Henry, his longest-standing favorite target, left the game with a foot injury. In other words, Maye was going to have to get creative to find yards. He did, with credit to the players who stepped up to match the “next man up” ethos coach Mike Vrabel demands.
But Maye also deserves a big pile of credit, for the way he continues to stick with guys even as they make mistakes, for establishing his own … circle of trust. Welcome, Efton Chism. Come on in, Kyle Williams. Have a seat, DeMario Douglas. Your quarterback loves nothing more than to see you succeed and the more you do to show him you deserve it, the more he’ll find you on the field.
Start with Chism, whose early fumble at the end of a catch set the lowly Dolphins up for easy first-half points. It was just the sort of play that could, and often does, earn an unproven player a permanent seat in the doghouse. Chism ended up with a team-high five catches on five targets.
Or Williams, whose otherworldly speed has yet to catch up with his often unreliable hands, but who juggled a 43-yard dart from Maye just long enough to break the plane of the end zone.
Or Douglas, the third of the under-6-foot trio who continues to prove his elusiveness and toughness, separating from defenders on a nifty 48-yard catch-and-run for a touchdown.
“Those guys, first off, they do things right, really all the time,” Maye said. “I think it’s a credit for them, blocking the run game, [and] getting rewarded.”
Fulfilling off-the-ball assignments is a key element of earning entry into this football fraternity. Failure to do so risks excommunication. As we saw in Brady’s later years, one too many mistakes closes the circle and locks guys out forever: Joey Galloway, Chad Johnson, N’Keal Harry. The longer Brady played, the less tolerant he seemed to get for players who couldn’t keep up, revealing in the lead-up to the 2015 playoffs how much he expected from his receivers, acknowledging how difficult he could be to play with.
“If you haven’t weeded out the guys that you don’t count on anymore, then those guys, they’re not playing,” Brady said before the Patriots hosted the Chiefs in the divisional round. “The guys that you count on, those are the guys that you’re kind of, I would say, in a foxhole with, so to speak. You’ve got to know who to count on and how to anticipate and know that you’re doing the right things ultimately to get productive plays and score points.”
The myth was confirmed — the circle of trust existed.
Maye is at the start of his learning curve, figuring out how to navigate the delicate balance between demanding excellence while showing faith. It was the very same equation Vrabel was talking about in his somewhat snarky WEEI interview on Monday. After repeated questions about Brown’s health status and in the middle of a different question about running back Rhamondre Stevenson (another player who has re-earned trust after a history of fumbling), Vrabel cut in with sarcasm, saying, “We should bench him. We should get rid of him.”
He was making a point about the risk of snap judgments, one he would emphasize later in the interview by shifting the focus to his quarterback. When talking about Chism’s response to that early fumble, Vrabel wondered aloud about Maye, who notoriously opened the season with six interceptions against one touchdown pass in three games.
“Imagine if we would’ve benched [him] after he threw a couple of interceptions?” Vrabel said. “I mean, that’s what you guys sound like sometimes. It’s ridiculous.”
Instead, the coach trusted Maye to respond. Now Maye, looking at the likes of rookie tight end Eli Raridon, or reserve running back Corey Kiner (who got seven carries Sunday in place of the injured TreVeyon Henderson), or the trio of Douglas, Williams, and Chism, continues to do the same.
Tara Sullivan is a Globe columnist. She can be reached at tara.sullivan@globe.com. Follow her @Globe_Tara.