Drake Maye was projected as a Super Bowl quarterback over a decade ago

Former North Carolina Tar Heels star Drake Maye is Super Bowl bound in just his second NFL season. One of the youngest quarterbacks ever to get there, his rise has felt rapid even by modern NFL standards.

But for Justin Farkas, the moment does not feel sudden.

After joining Twitter in late 2011, one offhand tweet from August 2012 has taken on a life of its own. It was written while Farkas watched a youth football game on a hot summer day, not with the intention of predicting a Super Bowl future, but simply reacting to what he was seeing. Farkas called a nine year old Maye the best athlete he had ever seen, even while playing up a league.

More than a decade later, the tweet reads less like exaggeration and more like early documentation.

Holy crap Drake Maye is the best athlete I've ever seen. Playing up a league and still the best in the league

Growing up around the Maye family in the Charlotte area, Farkas frequently ran into them at local sporting events. One youth football game from that time has stuck with him ever since.

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“I remember Drake being at least a foot shorter than everyone else out there,” Farkas told The Athletic. “He definitely did not have the same growth spurt yet that all of his brothers had had in their early teens. If you just looked at him, size wise, compared to everyone else, you would have expected him to get tossed around, but he was actually the one tossing people around, knocking them over, running circles around them.”

At the time, Maye was not a quarterback. He was a running back, dominating players two or three years older than him. The position has changed since then. The instincts have not. Throughout New England’s playoff run, Maye’s mobility showed up in key moments, including late scrambles that helped close out games.

Farkas admits his early attention was not focused solely on Drake. The Maye family had no shortage of talent. Drake’s older brother Luke became a standout at North Carolina, earning All American honors and winning a national championship. Luke has gone on to a successful professional career largely in Europe. Drake, meanwhile, was still the youngest brother, quietly stacking moments that only a few people noticed at the time.

What stood out even then was not just athletic ability. It was consistency. Across the Maye brothers, there was an expectation of preparation and effort that showed up long before any spotlight arrived. Farkas credits their parents for building that foundation.

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Now, Farkas’ old tweet is circulating widely, drawing comparisons to one of the most famous early called it moments on sports social media, a 2013 post identifying a sixth grader named Paige Bueckers as a future star years before the rest of the basketball world caught on.

Nothing tops the Paige Bueckers tweet https://t.co/JL33VAqpHR pic.twitter.com/npRTra77IB

The similarity is not hype. It is proximity. Being close enough to recognize dominance before it needed explanation.

Over the past day, Farkas has watched his words resurface across timelines and feeds.

“It’s been quite a whirlwind, albeit a fun one,” he told The Athletic.

Next, Maye and the New England Patriots will face the Seattle Seahawks in Super Bowl LX. By then, the tweet will almost certainly make another round.

Because once a prediction turns out to be right, it never really goes away.

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