What’s it like to coach Super Bowl QB Drake Maye? ‘So many memorable moments’

Scott Chadwick and Drake Maye don’t chat as often as they used to.

Certainly not as often as in high school, when plopping down on the couch in the Myers Park head coach’s office in Charlotte was practically part of Maye’s daily routine. Still less than the weekly Sunday calls while Maye was at UNC. That day of the week has gotten a bit busy, as you might imagine, for the New England Patriots QB, who will face Seattle in Super Bowl LX on Sunday.

But when Chadwick called Maye on a recent Wednesday — something that’s become more and more rare despite how close the duo is — he offered his former player a warning.

“With all the media I’ve done this week, I was joking with Drake, ‘If you see some stuff out there, and you’re kinda like, ‘Huh? It’s probably because I’m starting to make (stuff) up at this point,’” Chadwick said with a chuckle. “I’m running out of stories to tell.”

He’s kidding, of course, but the underlying sentiment is true: How many times can you recount the moment a special athlete first appeared special?

For some, it’s hard. For others, the sheer repetition has turned into a game of telephone. Certain details are exaggerated, stretched out for dramatic effect. Many have become part of the local folklore in Charlotte or Chapel Hill, a remarkable feat, really, when you consider Maye is just 23.

“Oh geez,” begins former coach Mark Harman, when asked what his favorite Maye story is. “I mean, he gave us, in such a short amount of time, so many memorable moments.”

For Harman, who coached alongside Chadwick at Myers Park, it was a simple throw.

After a freshman year spent at Hough High School in Cornelius, Maye transferred within Mecklenburg County to Myers Park. Harman recalls watching an early summer practice and was stunned with what he saw. Maye hadn’t even put on pads. He was just tossing with the receivers and was, maybe, 15 or 16. But Harman was in awe.

“Drake Maye, as a sophomore in high school, was throwing and I remember going, ‘I haven’t seen somebody look like that since Daniel Jones,’” Harman said, referencing the Duke Blue Devil turned Indianapolis Colts quarterback from Charlotte. “And that’s literally just watching him toss the ball around, warm up.”

Still, the fact that this same kid is starting in the Super Bowl? There’s only one word to describe it, one that Maye’s former coaches keep coming back to.

“I keep using the word surreal,” Chadwick said. “I mean, it’s just very surreal to think that kid who spent two years just sitting on the couch in my office… that guy is going to be the starting quarterback in the Super Bowl next week. It’s a little bit of a dream, to be honest with you.”

Surreal, yes, but once the stories start flowing, the conclusion feels unavoidable. It’s surreal, but not surprising.

The News & Observer spoke with five of Maye’s former coaches. Here’s what they remember — and why none of them are shocked he’s here on one of sports’ biggest stages.

Competitiveness is in his blood

One of Harman’s favorite Drake Maye stories has nothing to do with the quarterback, but everything to do with being the youngest of four Maye brothers. It’s about the oldest: Luke.

The year before Harman joined Myers Park, he coached at Hough, where Luke was a senior. Harman remembers losing more than one game of H-O-R-S-E and a few ping pong games to the eldest sibling.

Harman also remembers finally scoring a ping pong point on Luke and talking a little trash.

“His whole face and demeanor changed, and then I don’t think I scored another point,” Harman said. “I mean, he was sweating. The ball was going 100 miles per hour. And then it was done. He sat down, shook my hand, and kept walking.

“It was one of those funny things, because I saw the oldest brother acting that way, and then I got to be around the youngest,” Harman added. “Man, you want to talk about a family that just loves to compete and hates to lose.”

Much of that wiring, Drake Maye’s coaches say, is due to his upbringing. Drake was the runt — smaller, scrappier, always chasing. Older brothers Luke and Cole collected college championships. Even Beau, the least-accomplished athlete, played basketball at North Carolina. That was the bar. Drake learned how to compete for space at the breakfast table piled high with 36 scrambled eggs, for bragging rights in backyard grades and report cards.

“The great thing about that family is they compete with each other unbelievably,” Chadwick said. “They trash talk each other unbelievably. But they are also each other’s biggest fans.”

Chadwick saw this firsthand when he and a Myers Park defensive coach played Drake and Luke in golf. Drake, on the opposing team from Chadwick, casually reminded his coach about a lake that was nowhere near the fairway.

Look, I know you probably don’t see it, but just so you know, there is a big lake over there, way on the left. I just want you to know it’s there.

“What do you think I did?” Chadwick said. “Yeah, I pulled the frickin’ hook. The tee shot terribly, right into the water. And he just sat over there and smirked and smiled.”

Then it was Luke’s turn to tee off.

Did you see what Coach Chad did? Luke, there’s no way anybody should ever hit that ball in the water. Oh my God. How did he do that? Luke, you would never do that.

“Luke hits his freaking tee shot into the water,” Chadwick recalled. “And he turns and basically said, ‘F you Drake. Shut the f up.”

And sometimes, rarely, Drake found himself on the losing end. Former UNC coach Mack Brown recalls a summer day in 2022 when he walked into the UNC players’ lounge, amid bouts of laughter, and saw a broken ping pong paddle lying on the table.

“I said, ‘OK, who broke the paddle?’” Brown said. “And they all pointed to Drake.”

Drake, never one to argue or butt heads, provided his testimony.

Coach, I lost to the tight end. Can you believe that? Man, I lost to a tight end.

The ping pong incident was just one example of what Brown saw that offseason as Drake competed with Jacolby Criswell for the starting QB role as a redshirt freshman. He consistently beat out his teammates in practice. He won shuffle drills. He won sprints against defensive backs.

“I’d laugh at the defensive backs and say, ‘You’re all getting beat by a quarterback,’” Brown said. “And they said, ‘His legs are long! He can run faster than you think he can!’”

“I could see then that the team just fell into him and he won them over in the offseason,” Brown added. “Because I would ask who should be the starting quarterback, and they’d all say, ‘Drake. Drake competes.’”

Part of what made Drake so relentless — and so fun to watch in practice — was his playfulness, said former UNC quarterbacks coach Clyde Christensen.

“You might say, and you could get him going with this, ‘This kind of throw is probably a little bit beyond your talent level,’” Christensen said. “And then he’s going to compete like crazy to prove you’re wrong. He has fun that way.”

Drake thrived on moments that flirted with impossibility — threading a throw just out of reach or hitting the crossbar for a Coke after practice.

Some of Christensen’s favorite memories with Drake came after the hard work was done, when practice gave way to play. Long throwing sessions in the indoor facility would stretch for hours, but afterward, they’d hit the golf course — sometimes at the Chapel Country Club, sometimes at Finley — and go at it with the same intensity.

Even in the pros, Christensen sees Drake practice that same balance. After a 16-3 NFL playoff win over the Los Angeles Chargers on Jan. 11, there was only one way for the Patriots QB to celebrate with his three big brothers in town.

“Going home and, shoot, probably playing ping pong ‘til 1:30 or something,” Drake told reporters after the win.

Did they follow through on that plan?

“Yes ma’am,” Beau confirmed in a text to the N&O. “Till about 2.”

‘Keeping the peace’

Chadwick laughs when he thinks about bashful Drake Maye being teammates with the barefooted, zany Mack Hollins and the outspoken, full-of-attitude Stefon Diggs. But, upon second thought, it makes sense.

“The great thing about Myers Park is, like, you can do a sociological experiment,” Chadwick said.

On one end, you had kids from families whose wealth is in the billions — “measured with a B, not an M,” Chadwick jokes — with private jets and luxury vacations. On the other hand, there were students who approached Chadwick before spring break, asking if he had extra Gatorade bars to spare so they could go without a week of free lunches. Maye was tasked with leading them all on the field.

“And so I’m sure that helped him learn to navigate a college and NFL locker room as well,” Chadwick said.

Maye’s instinct for inclusivity showed up in small, clever ways.

Chadwick remembers a halftime routine from Maye’s junior year in high school. Cody Chadwick, the team statistician and Chadwick’s son, noticed Maye kept pulling him aside to check the numbers midway through games. After about three contests, Cody figured out what was going on.

“lt’s not because he’s trying to look at his numbers,” Cody told his dad. “He’s looking to see how many balls each one of the receivers has gotten. And then he goes to you, and he suggests plays to get the ball to the guys that haven’t had a lot of targets.”

To be clear, Myers Park had some wiggle room. Most games Drake’s junior year, the Mustangs found themselves up 30 or more points at the half, Chadwick recalls.

“Once I caught on, I would kind of give him that look like ‘I know what you’re doing,’” Chadwick said, “But that was just his way of keeping everybody happy and maybe keeping the peace in the receiver room as well.”

Maye’s knack for keeping everyone involved wasn’t limited to the football field.

When 16-year-old Maye’s first football season at Myers Park ended in late 2018, he immediately switched over to basketball. Multi-sport athletes like him are used to joining the hardwood a little late — North Carolina prep football playoffs overlap with the start of hoops — but it doesn’t make the transition any easier. Especially if you’re the new kid, stepping into an older team that had already been through a month of workouts and a few games.

So Maye, naturally, focused on making the extra pass and tried to get his teammates extra shots. That was, until the team played a midweek road game at Porter Ridge. As then-Myers Park basketball coach Scott Taylor remembers, the Mustangs were struggling.

“The game was back and forth, and in the fourth quarter, Drake just decided to make sure that we weren’t going to lose,” Taylor said.

From what Chadwick recalls, Myers Park entered the fourth quarter down by nine. He saw Maye say something to Taylor in the huddle, right before he broke out for 13 points and nine rebounds in the final quarter.

“I said to Scott on Monday at school, ‘So what did Drake say to you at the beginning of the fourth quarter?,’” Chadwick said. “He just kind of laughed, and he’s like, ‘Coach, I’m gonna go ahead and take this thing over.’”

And still, even as Maye’s accomplishments accumulated — Charlotte Observer Male Athlete of the Year and Under Armour All-American in high school, ACC Player of the Year, Manning Award finalist and FWAA Freshman of the Year in college — he tried to take the focus off himself whenever possible.

On North Carolina’s senior day in 2023, which was all-but-surely the final home game for an NFL-bound Maye, Brown implored his quarterback to walk.

“He said, ‘No, I’m not graduating. Senior days should be for graduation. It would be wrong of me to go out there and act like I had finished school.”

And so, because Maye insisted, there was no in-stadium memorial or senior day walk.

“That’s just who he is,” Brown said. “I see him now in these interviews and that’s why he’s so powerful in the locker room. He deflects the most valuable player chant and he’s always talking about his teammates, and they really appreciate that. He was the same way at Carolina.”

Chess, not checkers

It’s surreal to think the “aw shucks” kid from Charlotte is preparing to start a Super Bowl. Surreal, too, that this easygoing, eminently likable presence sits at the center of a Patriots team that is — somehow, given its dominant history — a group of plucky upstarts.

Maye’s ability to elevate those around him isn’t just a result of his arm strength or athleticism — although that came in handy plenty of times, what with his left-handed touchdown throw against Pitt or hurdling Duke defenders. Ask Brown or Christensen to recall their favorite plays from his college days and the highlight reel starts running through their mind. But what impressed many of Maye’s coaches most was his combination of awareness, maturity, and an almost uncanny sense of timing.

Christensen, who’s coached the likes of Tom Brady, Peyton Manning and Andrew Luck, saw it in quarterback meetings he dropped by when Maye was a true freshman, backing up another future NFL QB, Sam Howell. Maye was quiet, attentive, and always prepared. He took notes. He asked good questions at the right time.

“You’d be watching a play, and he would ask a question that was deeper than just what was on the film,” Christensen said. “Like, ‘What if they did this? Is there a possibility of this?’ He was playing chess and not checkers.”

When Christensen joined the UNC staff in Maye’s sophomore year, the young quarterback was still constantly learning, analyzing and preparing. That didn’t stop during team meals, either.

“Almost every meal, he was going to ask one serious question — how did Peyton handle this? What did Tom do in that situation?,” Christensen said. “It was never, ‘Hey, what kind of car did they drive?’ He was probing and laying the groundwork.”

Maye’s coaches will tell you that work ethic, with a next-play maturity beyond his years, has translated from preps through the pros.

Harman often had to coach young high school quarterbacks on the intangibles: how to keep a level head, not beat yourself up for interceptions and how to be an extension of the coaching staff. But Maye always had that. He didn’t need the pep talks.

When mistakes happen — a rare streak of errors for the phenom — Maye responded with focus rather than frustration.

“Almost like an eerie focus… a faraway, like locked in zone kind of look,” Harman said, “That probably was the scarier Drake. Because it’s like, when something went wrong, it lit a fire.”

This unique blend of winning traits — his awareness, preparation, humility and competitiveness — has allowed Maye to lift his team in ways that statistics alone can’t capture. In ways that stories, told and retold to this day, still try to. From his early days at Myers Park, orchestrating passes to ensure every receiver got a chance, to taking over late in basketball games to secure a comeback win, he has consistently demonstrated the ability to read a situation, assess what his team needs, and, most importantly, deliver.

For the coaches who have watched him grow, the pattern is unmistakable. So for him to end up in the Super Bowl is surreal, but not surprising in the least.

This story was originally published February 6, 2026 at 6:30 AM with the headline "What’s it like to coach Super Bowl QB Drake Maye? ‘So many memorable moments’."