Patriots' Drake Maye adored Panthers legend Cam Newton, and the QB hates on New England star at every turn

Patriots' Drake Maye adored Panthers legend Cam Newton, and the QB hates on New England star at every turn originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.

Drake Maye is a Charlotte, North Carolina kid. And he grew up there when Cam Newton was the star QB for the Carolina Panthers in that city.

These days, of course, Maye has grown into a superstar quarterback for the New England Patriots, now in his second season, preparing to play in the Super Bowl.

You would think that Newton would hype Maye up, right? One guy who starred in Charlotte at the pro level and another who made it happen at Myers Park High School in the suburbs outside Charlotte.

Well, you'd think wrong.

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Newton has trashed Maye all year long.

This week, Newton compared Maye to Rex Grossman and Trent Dilfer.

In this context, that's brutally insulting. Those guys were never in contention for an MVP award, and they certainly weren't close to as talented as Maye is.

Cam Newton compares Drake Maye to QBs like Rex Grossman and Trent Dilfer who benefited from elite defenses to make a Super Bowl run.

“They [the Patriots] are not here because of Drake Maye. That’s just facts.”pic.twitter.com/retqY5fZRG

— JPA (@jasrifootball) January 28, 2026

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One Boston-area scribe, Chris Cotillo of MassLive, had this take on X:

"I’ve thought about this a lot. As they talked about on CBS the other day, Maye (as a kid) went to Cam’s Super Bowl appearance in SF. Never meet your heroes, kids."

He's right. The CBS broadcast legitimately talked about how the only Super Bowl that Maye had ever been to was in the same stadium he's about to play in, when Newton made the big game.

Oh well. Maye will just have to keep proving Newton wrong.

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