From Rookie Revelation to Bridge Quarterback: Jacoby Brissett’s Full Patriots Story
Jacoby Brissett is one of only a handful of players who wore a Patriots uniform eight years apart and made each stint matter. His first came in 2016, as an unproven rookie thrown into starts by a cascade of bad luck. His second came in 2024, signed deliberately as a stopgap while Drake Maye learned how to play in the NFL. Neither chapter produced headlines that last — but together they tell a coherent story about what the Patriots valued in a quarterback when they couldn’t afford to gamble.
A Rookie With No Agent and Two Starts Nobody Expected
The Patriots selected Brissett in the third round of the 2016 NFL Draft, 91st overall, out of NC State. He had transferred there from Florida — saw limited opportunities with the Gators, moved to Raleigh, and threw 187 consecutive passes without an interception in 2014, which was the seventh-longest streak in ACC history at the time. He was a four-star recruit. He had real tools. But third-round quarterbacks drafted by New England don’t usually see the field in September of their rookie year.
Brissett saw the field in September of his rookie year. Tom Brady was suspended for four games due to Deflategate. Jimmy Garoppolo started Weeks 1 and 2, then separated his shoulder on a hit in the Miami game. The Patriots were winning 21-0 when Garoppolo went down. Brissett finished it — 6 of 9, 92 yards, the Patriots held on 31-24. A week later he started against the Texans: 11 of 19, 103 yards, and a 27-yard touchdown run in the first quarter. That run was the longest scoring scramble by a Patriots quarterback since Steve Grogan scored on a 41-yarder against the Jets in 1976. New England won 27-0.
He also became the first African-American quarterback to start for the Patriots in a regular-season game. That fact got some coverage at the time, then faded. It shouldn’t have. The franchise had been around since 1960.
His thumb gave out in the Bills game the following week — a 16-0 loss where the offense managed nothing. He went on injured reserve October 7, had surgery, came back in late November to practice, and was reactivated to the 53-man roster in late December, just in time to be inactive for the rest of the season. Brady returned, the Patriots went 14-2, and Brissett earned a Super Bowl ring watching Super Bowl LI from the sideline as New England beat Atlanta 34-28 in overtime.
The following September, the Patriots traded him to Indianapolis for wide receiver Philip Dorsett. The Colts needed a quarterback because Andrew Luck was hurt. New England needed a roster spot for Brady. Clean transaction, no drama. That’s how those things go.
Eight Years of NFL Life Between Patriots Stints
What happened between 2017 and 2024 is worth a quick map, because it explains why New England came back to him specifically. Brissett started 15 games for the Colts in 2017 after Luck missed the entire season — 3,098 yards, 13 touchdowns, 7 interceptions, a 4-rushing-touchdown year that tied a franchise record. He held the job together. Then Luck returned, Brissett became the backup, and that cycle repeated across multiple cities over the next six years.
Miami in 2021, off the bench for Tua Tagovailoa. Cleveland in 2022, the real standout stretch: 11 starts while Deshaun Watson served his suspension, 2,608 yards, 12 touchdowns, 88.9 passer rating — career bests on every significant number. He beat the Bengals that year with 278 yards and two total touchdowns and a 82.0 QBR. Washington in 2023, where he came off the bench in a relief role and completed 78.3 percent of his passes across three games, including a near-perfect 157.9 passer rating against the Rams in December.
The number that doesn’t get cited enough: entering the 2025 season, Brissett had averaged 1.4 interceptions per 100 pass attempts across his career, the lowest rate in NFL history among quarterbacks with at least 1,500 career attempts. That’s not a fluke. He has never been a guy who loses games by giving the ball away.
Why the Patriots Signed Him in March 2024
New England traded Mac Jones to Jacksonville in March 2024, took Drake Maye third overall in the draft, and signed Brissett to a one-year deal worth $8 million base, up to $12 million with incentives. The logic was straightforward once you understood the organizational structure: new head coach Jerod Mayo, new personnel chief Eliot Wolf, a 21-year-old franchise quarterback who had never taken an NFL snap. They needed someone who could start games, not lose them, and simultaneously function as a mentor to the guy who’d eventually replace him.
Offensive coordinator Alex Van Pelt had coached Brissett in Cleveland in 2022. That relationship mattered. Van Pelt’s offense has specific pre-snap adjustment tools — ways to get out of bad looks at the line — and Brissett already knew them. He wouldn’t need six weeks of installation time to stop hurting the team.
Brissett also negotiated his own rookie contract in 2016 without an agent — he was the only player in that draft class to do so. That kind of self-sufficiency tends to follow a player. He arrived in Foxborough knowing exactly what his job was and what it wasn’t. Mayo named him the starter on August 29. “We are 100 percent behind Jacoby,” Mayo said. He wasn’t wrong. He just knew it had an expiration date.
Starting Week 1 Over a Rookie Who Looked Ready
The honest complication here is that Maye outperformed Brissett during training camp and the preseason by most observable measures. Mayo acknowledged it. The decision to start Brissett anyway wasn’t about performance — it was about protection. The Patriots’ offensive line was shaky. The early schedule included playoff-caliber defenses. And the organization, three years removed from handing Mac Jones a starting job as a rookie only to give up on him in his third season, didn’t want to repeat the experience of accelerating a young quarterback before the surrounding structure was ready to support him.
Van Pelt put it clearly: there are situations in this offense — pressure looks, specific defensive adjustments — where Brissett’s nine years of experience told him what to do in real time. Maye was still learning what those situations looked like. That gap was real in August. It wasn’t going to stay real forever.
Five Weeks as Starter, Then One Sentence From Mayo
Week 1, Cincinnati: Brissett beat the Bengals 16-10. Actual upset. Joe Burrow had the ball and lost. It looked, briefly, like the plan might work better than expected.
Then four straight losses. The offense averaged 119.4 passing yards per game — the lowest in the league over that stretch. Brissett wasn’t the only problem. The line allowed pressure repeatedly. Receivers dropped balls. The play design didn’t help him. His final five-game line: 79 completions on 135 attempts, 696 yards, 2 touchdowns, 1 interception. Not a disaster in absolute terms, but 119 yards a game is not enough to win in the AFC East. Not close.
On October 8, NFL Network reported before the Patriots had announced anything that Maye would start Week 6 against the Texans. Mayo confirmed it. He told reporters Drake gives them the best chance to win. He wasn’t wrong about that either.
Brissett spoke to reporters the next day. He was visibly emotional — you could see it in his face and hear it in his voice. “It’s tough. I don’t think words can really describe how tough it is,” he said. Then: “I’m here to support Drake.” No drama, no complaint, no public fracture. Players around the locker room had been dealing with a tension that built during the losing streak; Brissett’s response helped defuse it. Maye’s first start brought what Mayo called a “renewed sense of energy” to the team. Some of that was just the excitement of the new. But some of it was Brissett making his own demotion easier on everyone else.
The Jets Game — Three Weeks on the Bench, Then One Drive That Mattered
Drake Maye took a hit in the second quarter against the New York Jets on October 27 and went into concussion protocol. The Patriots were at Gillette Stadium, trailing, six straight losses in the rearview. Brissett walked onto the field.
He completed 15 of 24 passes for 132 yards. The numbers are fine. What actually happened: he led a 14-play, 61-yard drive that ended in a field goal, then engineered the game-winning sequence in the final seconds. Patriots won 25-22. That snapped a six-game losing streak. The whole locker room was celebrating a win that, frankly, nobody outside Foxborough expected them to get.
After the game, several reporters framed it as a redemption story. Brissett pushed back on that framing. “I don’t look at it as no redemption,” he said. “I think this is a testament to me believing in myself and not y’all. I’m very aware of that. I was very fortunate to have this opportunity.” He didn’t say it with bitterness. He said it like a man who had been around the league long enough to know that the media narrative and the actual job are two different things.
That quote landed. It was specific, honest, and not the kind of thing a player says when they’re managing their image. He was just telling you what he thought.
What His 2024 Numbers Actually Show
Across eight appearances and five starts in 2024, Brissett completed 95 of 161 passes for 826 yards, 2 touchdowns, and 1 interception. He added 15 carries for 62 yards. His team went 2-3 in his starts.
For context: his 2022 Browns season, the best stretch of his career, produced a 64.0 completion percentage and an 88.9 passer rating behind an offensive line that gave him more time. In 2024, he was working behind a line that got him hit constantly, and his numbers predictably suffered. The interception rate stayed low. It always does with him.
He served as a team captain. That’s not a small thing — captaincy in New England gets handed to players the coaching staff and locker room both trust. At 31 years old, newly benched, he still wore that designation through the rest of the season.
Where He Went After Leaving New England
Brissett became a free agent in March 2025 and signed a two-year, $12.5 million contract with the Arizona Cardinals — the longest and most committed deal of his NFL career. The Cardinals’ organizational ties to Brissett run deep: GM Monti Ossenfort was New England’s Director of College Scouting when the Patriots drafted him in 2016. Head coach Jonathan Gannon coached alongside him in Indianapolis from 2018 to 2020. Offensive coordinator Drew Petzing coached him with the Browns in 2022. It’s not coincidental. Those connections matter in NFL free agency; they’re basically a reference network that pre-dates the contract.
His career line entering Arizona: 101 games played, 53 starts, 61.1 percent career completion rate, 11,400 yards, 53 touchdowns, a career passer rating of 84.3, and that 1.4-interceptions-per-100-attempts figure that still leads NFL history among qualified passers. He also has a Super Bowl ring from 2016, though he didn’t throw a pass in the game. His one postseason appearance is a reminder of how narrow the path is for quarterbacks who spend most of their careers as the guy keeping the seat warm.
The Patriots moved on without drama. Drake Maye eventually took over and led New England to Super Bowl LX in February 2026, where they lost to Seattle 29-13. Brissett was already in Arizona by then, watching from a distance the franchise he had twice served. The bridge held.
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