Drake Maye is groomed as the franchise QB, but he played just six snaps Thursday, and never work with starters in training.

Joe Milton shined for 1½ quarters in preseason play, but still has gotten almost no team reps in practice.

Bailey Zappe, meanwhile, played 36 snaps against the Panthers even though he’s A) a known quantity, B) doesn’t get many team reps in practice, and C) may not have a future on the team after training camp.

To top it off, new head coach Jerod Mayo doesn’t seem to want to take responsibility for the decisions, instead putting it on offensive coordinator Alex Van Pelt.

“Look, reps, it’s something to talk to the AVP about,” Mayo said Thursday night.

It’s really strange that Maye didn’t play much in the preseason opener. He will be benched when the regular season begins, and has just three preseason games to gain game experience.

“This is the first preseason game. We still have two left,” Mayo said Thursday. “He’s going to have a lot of opportunities to go against other teams.”

But there was value in getting on the field Thursday night, even for one nine-year veteran like starter Jacoby Brissett.

“It was mainly about communication, getting plays from AVP, getting into the huddle, getting into the line of scrimmage, snapping and then getting the ball,” Brissett said.

Instead, Maye’s night ended almost as quickly as it began. Mayo said Maye is getting a lot of work in practice, which the team sees as more important. But surely Maye, who rarely huddled or called his own plays at North Carolina, could have benefited from more than six snaps of live game experience Thursday. Of the six first-round quarterbacks this year, only Jayden Daniels (11 snaps) played fewer than 20 snaps last weekend, and Daniels is all but certain to be the Commanders’ Week 1 quarterback.

To be fair, there were valid reasons for the Patriots to be wary of Maye. The weather was miserable, and the last thing the Patriots need is for Maye to get hurt. Mayo also said the state of the Patriots’ offensive line factored into Maye’s playing time. With the Panthers sitting all of their starters, there might not be much to gain by playing Maye, but a lot to lose if he stayed in the game too long.

But it’s hard not to wonder if the Patriots are protecting Maye — or at least protecting the public from seeing where he is in his development. Maye hasn’t shined that bright in practice, but most fans don’t get to see that. A poor performance in Thursday’s preseason game could have set off panic alarms across New England.

Likewise, it’s a little strange that Maye doesn’t practice with the starting offense or against the starting defense. He’s getting plenty of work in practice — on Sunday, Brissett and Maye each got 26 reps in 11-on-11 drills, while Zappe got three and Milton just two. But Maye never works with or against the top units.

In 2021, a rookie Mac Jones shared first-team reps with Cam Newton almost immediately and eventually overtook him. But the Patriots don’t appear to be challenging Maye to beat out Brissett. Again, it makes you wonder if the Patriots are protecting Maye — keeping him with the backups so he doesn’t get exposed by the starters.

It also raises questions about whether Van Pelt, a first-time offensive coordinator, has Maye on too slow a track. If Brissett gets hurt this year, Maye will probably be the next man up, even in Week 1. He needs to work with the starters in camp.

Then there’s Milton, the sixth-round pick with incredible physical gifts who is also incredibly raw. Playing him for almost 20 minutes against the Panthers made a lot of sense. Burying him in training makes no sense.

Milton should get plenty of reps, especially after showing flashes on Thursday. Instead, for the past week and a half, he has mostly been a spectator during the second half of training. On Sunday, he took two measly snaps.

Maybe there just aren’t enough reps to go around after Brissett and Maye get what they need. Or, maybe, the Patriots don’t want Milton to play as well or better than Maye and create unwanted drama.

To top off the weirdness, Mayo seems to be pointing the finger at Van Pelt and offensive assistant Ben McAdoo for the QB decisions. After declaring Thursday that Van Pelt was in charge of the QB usage against the Panthers, Mayo on Friday and Sunday further confirmed that Van Pelt makes the decisions, calling him “the head coach of the offense.”

“Going into the game, I talked to the AVP, McAdoo and the whole offensive staff about what the plan is for the quarterback,” Mayo said Friday. “This conversation has been going on, and so this has always been the plan to develop these guys this way. We’ll see how it goes going forward.”

An important part of leadership is giving subordinates autonomy to do their jobs. And as Mayo said, “I don’t necessarily know all the lingo” when it comes to offense. But it’s not so pretty for Mayo to publicly take responsibility for the development of the quarterback, arguably the most important task of the entire preseason for the Patriots. The big decisions about how much Maye will play still fall to the head coach.

Mayo said Maye will play more this Thursday against the Eaglesbut wouldn’t quantify how much. The teams also have a joint training session on Tuesday.

“I would say this is a huge week for us against Philly,” Mayo said. “When he’s ready to go, we put him there.”

The Patriots have two main tasks this summer – getting the team ready to play and developing Maye into a franchise quarterback. After three weeks of camp and one preseason game, the plan is looking a little, well, weird.

---

Ben Volin can be reached at [email protected].