FOXBOROUGH, Mass (AP) — Drake Maye played the best football of his young NFL career during his first season working with New England Patriots offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels.
It included a Super Bowl run, his second straight Pro Bowl nod and a second-place finish to the Rams' Matthew Stafford in MVP voting to punctuate a season in which he completed 72% of his passes, threw 31 touchdowns and had 4,394 yards passing.
Click to Gallery
New England Patriots running back Rhamondre Stevenson (38) heads to a practice field with Drake Maye during the team's NFL football training camp, Thursday, July 30, 2026, in Foxborough, Mass. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)
New England Patriots quarterback Drake Maye signs autographs after the team's NFL football training camp, Thursday, July 30, 2026, in Foxborough, Mass. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)
New England Patriots quarterback Drake Maye, center, practices with quarterbacks Tommy DeVito (16) and Behren Morton (15) during the team's NFL football training camp, Friday, July 31, 2026, in Foxborough, Mass. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)
New England Patriots quarterback Drake Maye looks to pass during the team's NFL football training camp, Friday, July 31, 2026, in Foxborough, Mass. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)
He’s back for Year 3 with much the same offensive group that was the catalyst of the Patriots' offense.
Maye won’t have his top target from last season after Stefon Diggs was released in March, but the offseason trade for A.J. Brown has imbued Maye — and the offense as a whole — with confidence that it can find another level this season.
“That is the best thing about offense, like coach McDaniels (says): ‘It can be anybody any given day,’ and that is what the story was last year,” Maye said. “I feel like that is what we are trying to repeat and just have a little bit more juice and a little bit more swagger to us.”
Like he did before the start of training camp last season, Maye again hosted a group of Patriots receivers, including Brown, for three days that included workouts in his home state of North Carolina.
It helped jumpstart the chemistry-building process with Brown as he looks to continue the success he had in Philadelphia when he posted four straight seasons of more than 1,000 yards receiving.
Brown said he’s enjoying getting to learn about how Maye sees the field. He added that getting a dialogue going with his new QB is a must.
“My game will be my game," Brown said. "But as far as what he likes and what he needs, that’s the thing that I’ve got to get on the same page with him and continue to work on those things and we have to.”
Several of Maye’s teammates who have been around him the past two seasons see a quarterback who's more vocal on the field.
“I’m just trying to be myself, I think that is the big thing," Maye said. “I think it is natural when you are in the second year of an offense and you feel like you know what you are talking about, and you can put a year on tape where you feel like you did some good things and knew what you were doing most of the time.”
Backup quarterback Tommy DeVito says Maye finding more confidence in his voice is expected at this point in his career.
“I think going from Year 1 to Year 2 in an offense, growing with Josh, (coach Mike Vrabel) and the rest of the team and everybody around him feeling more comfortable ultimately playing in playoff games and a Super Bowl," DeVito said. "Coming back to now, I just think there’s a different chip on everybody’s shoulder. And I think for him coming out and telling everybody what he wants, that’s all the power to him and I’m looking forward to seeing him play this year.”
One thing Maye has taken advantage of so far in camp is testing himself and his receivers against Patriots star cornerback Christian Gonzalez.
Maye said he can already see it will pay off for a group that is already trying to outperform one another.
“We got a crowded room and I think they realize that the only thing to make the room even better is to keep making plays,” Maye said. “I wouldn’t even say crowded, it’s just a competitive room — is the biggest thing.”
AP NFL: https://apnews.com/hub/nfl
New England Patriots running back Rhamondre Stevenson (38) heads to a practice field with Drake Maye during the team's NFL football training camp, Thursday, July 30, 2026, in Foxborough, Mass. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)
New England Patriots quarterback Drake Maye signs autographs after the team's NFL football training camp, Thursday, July 30, 2026, in Foxborough, Mass. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)
New England Patriots quarterback Drake Maye, center, practices with quarterbacks Tommy DeVito (16) and Behren Morton (15) during the team's NFL football training camp, Friday, July 31, 2026, in Foxborough, Mass. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)
New England Patriots quarterback Drake Maye looks to pass during the team's NFL football training camp, Friday, July 31, 2026, in Foxborough, Mass. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia launched an intense barrage of ballistic missiles and drones overnight into Saturday, killing at least nine people and wounding 33 civilians in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, authorities said.
The strikes follow a major Russian attack two days earlier that killed at least 10 people and wounded more than 50 others across Ukraine, as Moscow apparently looks to exploit Kyiv’s critical shortage of Western-supplied anti-ballistic missile defenses. The relentless cycle of attacks dims the potential of reaching a diplomatic end to Russia’s more than 4-year-old invasion of its neighbor.
A five-story residential building in the city's Solomianskyi District was damaged by falling debris and a fire broke out. Rescue workers evacuated 35 people from the upper floors of the building and two people died, with eight reported injured, including two children, according to Ukraine’s state emergency service.
In the Darnytskyi District of Kyiv, seven people were killed and another 14 injured after the attack caused fires and damage to houses, vehicles, an administrative and non-residential building, the emergency services said.
Elsewhere, emergency workers extinguished a fire in a non-residential building in the capital’s Shevchenkivskyi district. There was no additional information about earlier reports by the district mayor that people were trapped in another residential building.
Damage to commercial and residential buildings was reported in two other city districts.
Lithuania’s foreign minister said the country’s embassy in Kyiv was damaged when missiles struck nearby overnight.
Russia’s defense ministry said Saturday it had launched a “massive strike” against “Ukrainian military-industrial complex facilities and logistics centers in Kyiv.”
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has pressed the United States and other Western partners over Ukraine’s need for more Patriot anti-ballistic missile defense systems to counter missile attacks from Russia.
“Every package of ballistic missile interceptors saves the lives of our people. And every night without them results in more casualties,” he wrote on X following the latest attacks.
The Ukrainian leader late Friday said he spoke to U.S. Vice President JD Vance and discussed a meeting with President Donald Trump earlier this week in Washington, which Zelenskyy described as “positive and productive.”
“The Russian air strikes on our country continue and air defense, specifically interceptors for Patriot systems against ballistic missiles, remains a top priority,” Zelenskyy said Friday in a post on Telegram.
At a NATO summit in Ankara in July, Trump said the U.S. would give Ukraine a license to make Patriot systems, but he appeared to move away from that commitment on Friday during a Cabinet meeting at the presidential retreat in Camp David, Maryland, saying he had not yet made a final decision on the matter.
From a basement shelter where she was taking cover as a second air alarm sounded for another wave, Liudmyla Nakonechna, 64, described how she was woken by loud explosions at 1:30 a.m.
“I ran into the corridor and was standing there when the bathroom door was blown off its hinges and struck me in the leg,” said Nakonechna, whose health is poor after undergoing cancer treatment. “I heard the sound of shattering glass. My balcony was covered in glass and it was completely blown apart, while the windows in my bedroom were also blown out.”
Nakonechna had not taken cover in a shelter since Russia’s full-scale invasion on Feb. 24, 2022, but the stress became too much, she said.
“It’s getting worse by the day,” Nakonechna said. “Whereas before there was an attack once every two weeks, or maybe once a week, now it happens practically every day. It is incredibly hard to bear this psychologically.”
— A Russian airstrike killed one person and wounded five more in the city of Kherson in southern Ukraine, local officials said Saturday.
— In Russian-occupied Crimea, the Moscow-appointed head of the city of Sevastopol, Mikhail Razvozhayev, said Saturday that a 60-year-old woman was killed and two other people wounded in a drone attack on the city.
— Ukrainian drones struck three Russian oil refineries overnight in the Russian republic of Bashkortostan, Zelenskyy said Saturday. The refineries “process millions of tons of oil each year” and are located nearly 1,600 kilometers (994 miles) from Ukraine, Zelenskyy said on social media.
The Russian online news outlet Astra reported Saturday that a Ukrainian drone set an oil refinery in Ufa, the capital of Bashkortostan, ablaze. Local officials said debris from a downed drone caused “smoke” at an unnamed “industrial zone.”
Ukraine’s almost daily long-range drone and missile strikes using domestically developed weapons have battered Russian oil facilities for months. The operation has brought a fuel crisis that is embarrassing the Kremlin more than four years after Russia’s all-out invasion of its neighbor.
— A sanctioned Russian container ship, the Yanina, sank in the Black Sea after being hit by Ukrainian drones, Zelenskyy said Saturday, listing the ship as among “facilities that sustain the war effort.”
Russia’s state nuclear energy company, Rosatom, whose shipping subsidiary FESCO operates the vessel, said the ship was carrying “civilian goods” such as frozen food and construction materials.
Emergency services personnel work to extinguish a fire following Russian missile attacks in Kyiv, Ukraine, Saturday, Aug. 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)
Emergency services personnel work to extinguish a fire following Russian missile attacks in Kyiv, Ukraine, Saturday, Aug. 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)
Emergency services personnel work to extinguish a fire following Russian missile attacks in Kyiv, Ukraine, Saturday, Aug. 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)
Emergency services personnel work to extinguish a fire following Russian missile attacks in Kyiv, Ukraine, Saturday, Aug. 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)
