Drake Maye threw three interceptions in a 13-10 loss to Seattle, and then he did the thing young quarterbacks almost never do at a podium: he named the actual reason. Not the protection. Not the drops. Not the noise. Patience, or the lack of it.

"Unacceptable," he called the night. "I lost patience and it cost us."

That is a rare sentence. Most quarterbacks coming off three picks reach for the passive voice like it is a life raft. Maye grabbed the wheel instead.

What Drake Maye said about his three interceptions

The self-scouting report matters more than the box score line here, because it is specific. Losing patience is not a talent problem or an arm problem. It is a clock problem: the internal one that tells a quarterback when a concept is dead and the checkdown is the win. In a game where the opponent needed only 13 points to walk out with it, every extra beat spent hunting the throw that changes the game is a beat spent handing it away.

Three turnovers in a three-point loss is not subtle math. Any one of them going the other way is a different Wednesday night in New England.

A Super Bowl LX rematch that played like a rock fight

This was billed as a rematch of Super Bowl LX, which is exactly the kind of marquee the league loves to hang on Week 1, and exactly the kind of marquee that September ignores. Twenty-three combined points. Seattle's defense gave up 10 and took the ball away three times. Whatever those two teams were in February, this was a slog, and openers are almost always a slog. Timing is the last thing to come back.

checked the almanac: peyton manning threw 28 interceptions as a rookie in 1998, the most by a first-year quarterback, and the man walked off a champion twice. one bad night with the ball is a data point, not a verdict.

Seattle Seahawks injury news: Darnold's hip and A.J. Brown's ankle

The Seahawks won this one the hard way. Sam Darnold went down with a hip injury on the opening drive, was listed as questionable to return, and Seattle still walked out with the game. When your quarterback exits on the first possession of the season and you win anyway, that is your defense telling you what it plans to be about.

On the other sideline, A.J. Brown's Patriots debut ended early in the third quarter with a right ankle injury, and he did not come back. New England spent an offseason building a passing game around a new number one target, and it got roughly half a game before the training staff got involved. Maye lost his best answer at exactly the point of the night when a quarterback most needs one.

I am not going to pretend I know the severity on either man. That reporting has not come through, and guessing at somebody's hip or ankle is how you end up wrong and loud at the same time.

What comes next for Drake Maye and the Patriots

The encouraging part of the Maye quote is that he diagnosed something coachable. A young passer who says he pressed can be shown the tape and given a simpler menu: earlier throws, cleaner reads, take the six yards the defense is handing over. A young passer who blames the world around him cannot be helped at all.

So here is what I am watching. First, whether Brown is on the practice field at all before the Patriots' next game, because the shape of that offense changes completely without him. Second, Darnold's hip and how much of Seattle's plan survives it. Third, and this is the one that tells us the most: Maye's next start, and specifically what he does on second-and-long, the down where impatience goes to die.

One rough night does not define a quarterback. What he does with it usually does.