It was hard not to compare the 2025 New England Patriots to the 2001 team, which, in Tom Brady’s second season, and first as the starting quarterback, made an underdog run to the Super Bowl to kick off one of the greatest sports dynasties ever.
What happens when that underdog story fails in the final chapter? This current version of the Patriots is living in that reality, and the reactions to their brutally one-sided, 29-13 loss to the Seattle Seahawks in Super Bowl LX have already been ugly.
The NFL world loves to take victory laps at the Patriots’ expense, and those laps have been loud and proud. A team that banded together to win 17 games is now somehow a fraud. The quarterback, Drake Maye, who posted an undeniable All-Pro season and reached the Super Bowl in his first year as the full-time starter, suddenly can’t win the big game.
Those narratives would’ve flipped the other had Sunday's confetti been red, white, and blue, but Patriots fans are instead left in an insufferable fog that likely won’t clear until September.
Per BetMGM, the Patriots’ odds of a redemption season in 2026 are long, tied with the Chiefs, Chargers, and Lions, and behind the Packers, Eagles, Ravens, Bills, Rams, and Seahawks. That puts them on the top-10 borderline for a Super Bowl repeat.
Just how out are the league’s national writers on the Patriots entering Year 2 of the Mike Vrabel era? The Athletic’s Jacob Robinson placed Seattle’s chances of getting back to the Super Bowl at 30 percent.
He’s got the Patriots at 5 percent.
The Patriots’ 2026 schedule is already fueling a massive overreaction
Robinson’s main point hinges on — you guessed it — the schedule.
The Patriots faced the 32nd-strength-of-schedule in 2025, the easiest, and are poised to flip to the other end of that spectrum in 2026. New England’s road opponents alone represent a major challenge, with the Bears, Chiefs, Lions, Jaguars, Chargers, and Seahawks all on their board as non-division foes. They’ll also host the Broncos, Steelers, Packers, and Vikings at Gillette Stadium in 2026.
“You’ve surely tired of hearing about their historically easy schedule," Robinson wrote. "Well, it will now flip into one of the league’s tougher slates, with 11 games against teams that finished above .500, plus the Chiefs (6-11). For contrast, only three of New England’s 2025 opponents finished this season above .500.”
The schedule is a fair point. It’s also played-out and lacks any sort of forward thinking.
Maye’s play dipped in the postseason, but he faced the toughest stretch of defenses in NFL history and was clearly playing through a right shoulder issue in the Super Bowl.
The idea that he’s automatically going to regress in 2026 due to stiffer competition is an oversimplification. He fell one vote shy of winning league MVP — during his age-23 season. He’s just as likely to take the NFL by storm in Year 3 as he is to fall back to the pack.
The Patriots were also ahead of schedule in 2025. Vrabel just got his hands on the roster, and the team has all the cap space and motivation to add this offseason. Fixing the protection issues and adding more weapons for Maye, figure to be a priority, and those upgrades will only make this Patriots team tougher to deal with going forward.
It was fair to dance on the Patriots’ grave following Brady’s departure in 2020, but not after Super Bowl LX. New England’s loss to Seattle shouldn’t just signal the end; it could also signal the start of a nightmare the NFL world clearly isn’t yet ready to take seriously.