Patriots Camp — Aug 23: Maye Strings 13 Straight at the Eagles

15 of 18 against the Eagles' starting defense, 13 of them in a row — that was Drake Maye's Wednesday in the joint practice at Philadelphia, per Ian Logue at PatsFans.com, who charted him spreading those completions across nine different receivers. The loudest of them went to A.J. Brown, who caught all seven passes thrown his way against the team that traded him, per Nicole Yang at The Boston Globe. Quinyon Mitchell broke up one early deep shot, and Brown's review of it was the honest kind: "Q got away with a little bit of holding... I've got to finish the play. My right hand didn't get to the ball quick enough." His review of his quarterback was warmer — "He's very special. He makes my job a lot easier" — with an admission that the two are still mid-curve on how Maye sees the field.

The offensive line's report card from the two-day series came back mostly green, and the details matter because pass protection has been this roster's one named leak all summer. Per Evan Lazar at the team's website, center Jared Wilson — who lost both his charted reps to a nose tackle a week earlier — went three-and-one in his individual matchups with Jordan Davis, about the biggest body he will see all season. Right guard Mike Onwenu went three-and-oh against Jalen Carter and Moro Ojomo on the same chart. The soft spot moved outside: left tackle Will Campbell split his one-on-ones with Jalyx Hunt, and Lazar filed his stunt recognition as still developmental. Lane Johnson, watching from the other sideline, told Yang that Campbell "kind of reminds me of myself, in a way. You can see him getting better. He looks thicker and bigger," and offered the second-year tackle a standing invitation to his Oklahoma training facility. The offense's genuine bad file lived in Thursday's red-zone periods, which Lazar called its clearest weakness of the series. Maye did not argue, at his Thursday press conference on the team's website: "It's tough down there in the red zone. A lot of bodies in a small amount of space but I feel like we could have done more," and, on his standing rule, "You can't be late in the red zone down there. It's tight."

The defense spent the same two days taking the ball away without its best player. Yang counted five takeaways in Wednesday's session, two of them Craig Woodson interceptions off Jalen Hurts, and Marcus Jones came within a stumble of returning one. Safety Kevin Byard's endorsement of the second-year Woodson: "He's been having a phenomenal camp. Two takeaways today, can't get any better than that."

Saturday's game, a 24-21 win over the Eagles, belonged to the roster's back half — Maye dressed and did not play, and nine Patriots sat, per the team's website's game observations. Behren Morton went 13 of 17 for 129 yards and a touchdown, Tommy DeVito went 8 of 15 for 151 with a 36-yard scramble, rookie receiver Kyle Williams broke a 69-yard catch, and Nick DeGennaro caught the fourth-quarter game-winner. Running back Lan Larison put up 74 scrimmage yards on 12 touches with a pair of fourth-down conversions — file that to the third-back competition, which got a new entrant this week when the team signed Hassan Haskins, a Vrabel back in Tennessee, per Yang. Kicker Andy Borregales, whose two-of-five night against the Colts started a minor panic, went three-for-three on extra points with a 41-yard field goal, after making four straight in Wednesday's practice including a 52-yarder per Logue — a bad night, increasingly, rather than a problem. The costs of the evening were structural: tackle Marcus Bryant left early with an ankle injury, pushing first-rounder Caleb Lomu into extended snaps, linebacker Chad Muma left late, and Vrabel said out loud that the inside linebacker group is "not very deep."

The injury ledger, briefly, because most of it did not move. Christian Gonzalez has now missed two full weeks — every practice and both preseason games since he got hurt on August 10 — with no injury description and no timetable; Vrabel has said the absence is about the injury, not the extension talks, per Yang, and his fullest public line on the rehab group was "They're here... They're rehabbing... they won't be out there today." That is a non-update, but it is a non-update about the best player on the defense. The one real change on the ledger: interior lineman Ben Brown's timeline got numbers — "Ben's gonna be a few weeks... Four to six... eight, 10, 12," Vrabel said, via Michael Hurley at NBC Sports Boston — and the team added veteran guard Greg Van Roten for interior depth, per its own site. Christian Barmore's four missed practices in a week are managed maintenance — "It's a long season. He's played a lot of football for us," per Vrabel, via Yang.

Back in July we previewed this team as the market's strangest case — a top-six championship price next to an underdog line in its own division — and sided with the roster, and we have been checking that read against camp every week since. The offensive half keeps passing bigger tests: first the Colts' front, now the Eagles' starters, with the specific interior questions getting specific good answers. The other half of the scale is real too — two weeks of silence around Gonzalez and a line-and-linebacker depth chart that keeps losing bodies — which is why the read stays complicated rather than clean. What to watch: whether Gonzalez practices before cutdown to 53 on Sunday, August 30, and what cut day does about interior line and inside linebacker depth. We'll check after cut day.

_Data via nflverse._