FOXBORO, Mass. -- Nobody can, nobody should, toss any water on the overwhelming consensus that the New England Patriots' Drake Maye has made a sparkling ascension this season to big-boy quarterback status. And for those of you who've been licking envelopes as part of a grassroots effort on behalf of a "Maye for MVP" campaign, keep on keeping on. That's what free and fair elections are all about.

But second-year quarterbacks are going to have second-year games. The bad kind. And that, in essence, is the dark cloud that hovered over Gillette Stadium late Sunday afternoon as the Patriots emerged with a 24-23 victory over the Atlanta Falcons. Now make no mistake: The Pats will take the W, their sixth in a row, which improves their record to 7-2. As Patriots coach Mike Vrabel put it, "It's a funny league. And we're going to learn from winning, so we don't have to learn from losing."

To make things even better, the Pats held off a late comeback by the Falcons, who rallied from 21-7 to nearly tying the game, except that Parker Romo's extra-point try went wide right with 4:44 remaining. (Though we can surely agree that "21-7" would never have been as big a deal as "28-3" had the Falcons pulled this one off.)

Yes, Maye continued to make the kind of crisp completions that help explain why everyone's been going gaga over him all season. He threw touchdown passes to DeMario "Pop" Douglas and Stefon Diggs. There was a 58-yard completion to Douglas, made lovelier by the Pop Star's stellar zigging and zagging after the initial catch. There was a 17-yard completion to Hunter Henry with 1:42 remaining that enabled him to take a knee a couple of times as time ran out.

But Maye also fumbled the ball following a sack late in the first half. He threw a goofy interception involving Henry, though it's hard to tell who wasn't in sync with whom on that one. Worst of all, the absolute worst of all, he scrambled to his right for 12 yards and a first down on New England's first possession of the day, which will look good on the stat sheet, but the problem is that it didn't end with a trot out of bounds or a nice, safe slide. It ended with Maye being tackled hard by Falcons cornerback A.J. Terrell Jr.

Nobody had to tell Maye that he took a terrible, dangerous chance on that play.

"Yeah, I was trying to cut back, and cutting back is probably not in my repertoire," he said. "I need to get down."

It's more than that. Maye needs to remind himself he's a franchise quarterback on a team that's making a surprising, some might say shocking, playoff run that's one year ahead of schedule. At a time when people are already tying themselves up in knots making comparisons between Maye and Tom Brady, some of them cute, some of them outlandish, some of them comically out of touch with reality, here's one thing we can all agree on: Maye doesn't protect himself the way Brady did. Brady could close his eyes and stick his head in a bucket of water and still know the whereabouts of opposing players. And he took more slides than Rickey Henderson.

The good news? Maye knows he has work to do. So well does he know this that after the game, he brought it up himself before anyone could get around to asking him. It was actually kind of funny. Postgame media availabilities often begin with a couple of warm-up questions, in this case a softie about finishing off the Falcons. Only Maye wasn't having it.

"Umm, first, I have to play better," Maye said. "I gotta play better for this team, because down the road ... it's tough for the team when you win and you can feel in that locker room that you know you gotta play better."

He did meander back to the premise of the question, observing that "it's tough to win in this league, so you gotta enjoy it." And he acknowledged his game-sealing 17-yard pass to Hunter, saying, "Hunt made a big play down the sideline."

But these measured answers, along with the voluntary contrition, suggest that Maye would not be in disagreement with the callers who are going to be dialing into the talk shows over the next couple of days to express concern that some "Slowdowns Ahead" signs are showing up on New England's road to the playoffs.

The fumbles? The interceptions? Those are not dealbreakers. As if to prove the point, Vrabel could be seen pulling Maye aside for a chat after the interception by Jesse Bates III in the third quarter. It was a nice Hallmark moment, the veteran coach having a heart-to-heart with his 23-year-old quarterback.

"He's great at coming up to me," Maye said. "He's always positive, always wanting me to rally the guys around me, always challenging me to battle adversity and get the guys going. I appreciate the way he's coaching. He's hard on you, but he's very positive, and I think he wants the best out of me. And everything that he says to me, I think is going to be important."

Sounds like the way former Patriots coach Bill Belichick used to encourage Mac Jones.

But there's not much you can say to a quarterback who's being carried off the field on a stretcher, except maybe, "See you at training camp."

It's great, the way Maye runs the ball. It's frightening, the way Maye goes down. And it's something Vrabel and offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels need to keep talking about with Maye, and not in a heart-to-heart kind of way.