Settling in at his gate at Indianapolis International Airport, the 6' 4", 223-pound quarterback with the sweet-tea accent and aw-shucksdemeanor is going through his mental Rolodex to explain what it was like growing up with his dad and three brothers.
One of his siblings was the starting power forward for the North Carolina Tar Heels basketball team. Another played baseball for the Florida Gators, and both won national titles as collegians. A third brother just finished playing hoops for the Tar Heels. And Drake followed in his dad’s footsteps as a UNC quarterback, three-and-a-half decades after Mark Maye wore the Carolina blues.
So, naturally, there was a certain intensity to day-to-day life growing up at home.
And it was not limited to the house, either.
“We had a rough two-minute drill at the end of practice one time, and my dad was the middle school offensive coordinator,” Maye says from his seat in the terminal. “He was yelling at me to get it right the whole time, not really yelling at any other people. I was like, … But looking back on that, I’m really thankful for it because it really taught me what it’s like to grow into this level, and what I needed to do at the higher levels.”
That fire? The youngest of Mark Maye’s four sons inherited it and, with the 2024 NFL scouting combine now complete, the league’s quarterback-hungry teams are well aware of it, too.
You know how strong this year’s class is at the position. The USC Trojans’ Caleb Williams might be the most talented prospect to come out in years. The LSU Tigers’ Heisman winner, Jayden Daniels, has seen his stock rise like a rocket ship the past six months. There’s depth, too, where you could find a competent starter into the middle rounds. But no one helped himself more than Maye, who left an impression with scouts that echoed in the bars and restaurants of Indianapolis.
That impression was, well, the antithesis of what they’d expected. The quarterback teams thought they’d get—with that voice and laid-back gait—instead brought the juice, coming across as competitive and fiery. After someone told me Maye is more Philip Rivers than Eli Manning or Daniel Jones, a mutual friend of both Rivers and Jones gave me a direct response.
“He Philip,” the person says. Later, Jim Denton, agent to both, just smiled at the comp. And in prompting it—and showing who he is—Maye accomplished what he wanted to.
“That was my goal,” he says. “My play style is kind of cool, calm and collected. I wanted to let people hear me. … Even in the interviews, they mentioned, . Getting to see that side of me, in the locker room, me in meetings and me at practice, it was really what I wanted to accomplish. So hearing that really makes me feel good.”
It made teams feel pretty good, too.
