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On Sunday, Drake Maye will become the fourth quarterback under the age of 25 to participate in a Super Bowl in the PFF era (since 2006). Throughout this time, we have eight total examples of a quarterback leading their team to the Super Bowl within their first three NFL seasons.
We revisited these Super Bowl performances to see if we could spot any trends among younger, less-experienced signal-callers stepping into the biggest game on the football calendar.
There are clear advantages to having a veteran quarterback when reaching this stage of the season. Most exude a sense of calm and comfortability that no young quarterback can offer — no matter how relaxed Maye appears when he trots out for New England’s opening drive on Sunday. But, we shouldn’t dismiss the upside youthful quarterbacks often bring over their aging counterparts.
Consider that this will be the first Super Bowl in Patriots history where they have viable rushing upside at quarterback. Maye is by no means a dual-threat quarterback in the same fashion as Josh Allen or Lamar Jackson, but it was his legs that carried the Patriots over the line in a dogfight AFC Championship Game in Denver. The Patriots will allow their young star to call his own number in crunch time once more if this situation allows.
One thing that sticks out most when revisiting prior young quarterbacks to feature in Super Bowls is how safely they navigated the opening quarter of action. These quarterbacks combined for just one first-quarter turnover-worthy play (via Patrick Mahomes in his Super Bowl debut) — a turnover-worthy-play rate of 1.5%. All of the more-experienced Super Bowl quarterbacks almost doubled that with a rate of 3.7%.
The youngsters’ combined average depth of target in first quarters was just 7.2 yards, which is low but not unusual on its own — after all, it makes sense to ease your young quarterback into the biggest game of his career. However, it gets very interesting after the first quarter concludes.
In the second quarter and beyond, these young quarterbacks’ average depth of target skyrockets to 11.7 yards. For context, the league-wide average depth of target this season (excluding first quarters) was 8.5. These players really became unleashed once they had a quarter of Super Bowl action under their belt.
The results of turning these players loose was mixed. In Mahomes’ case, his pair of second-half interceptions and three sacks opened the door for the 49ers, who just couldn’t capitalize. Meanwhile, when Jalen Hurts attacked downfield in Super Bowl 57, he delivered one of the finest performances of his entire career. Ultimately, Mahomes won while Hurts lost, proving that it will come down to much more than just Maye on Sunday.
The groove the Seahawks’ offense has been as of late suggests Maye will need to go for broke and take risks in this game to keep pace, but the Patriots’ defensive chances remain relatively unknown in this matchup. Until we see Klint Kubiak’s unit firing on all cylinders, there’s no reason for Maye to start dialing up the hero ball in the early stages.
Overall, the best performance from a young quarterback in modern Super Bowl history was delivered by Russell Wilson, when his Seahawks dominated the Broncos 43-8 in Super Bowl 48. Wilson completed 72% of his passes, with 8.2 yards per attempt and a 123.1 passer rating — all of which are in the top 10 of Super Bowl performances in the PFF era.
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