Drake Maye Shades Cam Newton After 'Fool's Gold' Comment amid Patriots' 9-2 Record

Former Carolina Panthers quarterback and current ESPN NFL analyst Cam Newton said on the Nov. 14 edition of First Take that he believes the New England Patriots' 9-2 start is "fool's gold" because they haven't played a tough schedule (5:00 mark).

On Wednesday, Maye was asked about Newton's remarks during his weekly WEEI Radio appearance. He then said the following to WEEI's Andy Hart.

"Oh no," Maye said. "I don't even know what show he's on. I think they get paid to make remarks and make certain comments, so just worried about people in our organization think and worry about what we think and my teammates think and, you know, everybody's going to have different opinions, so we just got to go out there Sunday and worry about ourselves."

The Patriots certainly don't have Newton's full respect right now, based on his remarks.

"It has fool's gold written all over them, cubic zirconia middle of the mall," Newton said, per Lauren Campbell of MassLive.

"And yes, is Drake Maye playing good football? Absolutely. I would like to attest his great play to one specific person that I know too well, Josh McDaniels. Now Josh McDaniels may not be a great head coach, but he is a brilliant offensive mind.

Newton then added these comments: "The thing I have a problem with is if you keep playing sorry scrubs, then you're going to have this falsetto of a mentality going into the playoffs and it has one-and-done written all over it."

Per ESPN, the Patriots have encountered the easiest strength of schedule in the league thus far. Seven of New England's 11 opponents have losing records, with six of them having just one, two or three victories.

However, the Pats have won eight straight games, and two of those were impressive road victories over the 7-4 Buffalo Bills (23-20) and 6-4 Tampa Bay Buccaneers (28-23).

Ultimately, the Patriots can only play who's on their schedule, and they've done as well as they can over the past two months.

At this juncture, it would be stunning if the Pats don't make the playoffs given their record and a relatively easy schedule down the road that includes four of six games with teams that have 4-7 records or worse.

Should the Pats make the postseason, time will tell if the Pats are "fool's gold" or not. That being said, New England does look the part largely because of Maye, an NFL MVP candidate having a tremendous second season thanks to a 71.9 percent completion rate, 22 total touchdowns (20 passing, two rushing) and 2,836 passing yards (8.9 yards per pass attempt).

For now, Maye and the Patriots look to move to 10-2 on Sunday when they visit the 3-7 Cincinnati Bengals.