DHL Dan CCLXXXIII - Tom Terrific II?

That's where Shank seems to be heading with this week's Picked Up Pieces column:

Will second-year QB Drake Maye do for the Patriots what Tom Brady did 24 years ago? And other thoughts.

Picked-up pieces while waiting for Sunday night’s kickoff at Gillette . . .

⋅ It was 24 years ago in a January snowstorm, and New England’s kid quarterback was a complete unknown, playing his first playoff game, a weekend, prime-time special against a West Coast team that came into the league in 1960, same year as the Boston Patriots. The New England Patriots of 2001 hadn’t won a playoff game in four years, and no one knew what to expect from a quarterback who was only two years out of college.

The Patriots won that night, beating the hated Raiders, 16-13, in overtime — the final game in the history of old Schaefer/Sullivan/Foxboro Stadium — and the next day’s Boston Globe featured a Page 1 story by yours truly, which started, “With wonderboy Tom Brady at the controls, the Patriots magic bus rolled on a carpet of packed powder last night. It appears the football gods won’t stop pushing this team until it arrives in New Orleans for Super Bowl XXXVI.”

Moronic hyperbole, for sure. Only a dope truly believed that Brady and the 2001 Patriots were bound for the franchise’s first Super Bowl victory.

Here we are almost a quarter of a century later, and the Patriots are sending 23-year-old Drake Maye — two years out of college — out to face the Chargers on “Sunday Night Football” at Gillette Stadium. It’ll be the first playoff game of Maye’s young career and it’s hard to know what to expect from a kid who might end up being MVP of the NFL for 2025.