For fans of the New England Patriots, the worst part about last year’s uncompetitive loss to the Seattle Seahawks in Super Bowl LX was the one painful narrative that now refuses to die.
Rival and neutral observers didn’t even have to watch the Patriots play in 2025 (and for the majority, it’s clear they didn’t). Their takes were delivered on a silver platter. New England, helped by finishing last in the AFC East in 2024, had the league’s most favorable regular season schedule. Their good fortune continued in the playoffs when they faced the Chargers, Texans, and Broncos — three beat-up, defensive-minded teams that struggled to score points.
By the time Super Bowl week arrived, you could almost feel it coming. Maye had been robbed of the MVP award. The national commentary was heavily slanted toward Seattle being the superior team, and that was backed up by a 4.5-point spread that never budged across the major sportsbooks leading up to kickoff.
The Patriots didn’t even have to win the game. Had they given Seattle the kind of battle the Rams did in the NFC Championship, all the finger wagging over their easy schedule would have quietly dissipated. Losing 29-13 in the fashion the Patriots did, with no points on the board until the fourth quarter, only dumped gasoline on the notion that they didn’t deserve to be there in the first place.
Those who actually watched and studied the Patriots in 2025 know that’s complete hogwash, but as ESPN analyst Ryan Clark said on Friday morning’s episode of Get Up, there’s no stopping the avalanche of bad takes that are sure to flow Foxboro’s way until September.
“This is a totally different schedule with different expectations,” said Clark, emphasizing the Patriots’ matchups with teams from NFC North and AFC West this year. “No one thought about Drake Maye as an MVP candidate, or Mike Vrabel as a Coach of the Year candidate, or this team being the type of team that could get to the Super Bowl. It’s different now. You aren’t sneaking up on anyone. I believe they not only take a step back, but in my opinion the New England Patriots miss the playoffs this year based on this schedule.
“I know what everybody’s going to say: ‘They got four wins,’ because they get Miami and they get the New York Jets, but I believe the rest of this schedule will make it extremely difficult.”
The NFL world still refuses to fully respect the Patriots’ Super Bowl run
First of all, no one should take Clark’s commentary on the Patriots seriously. He’s already embarrassed himself, including a segment on First Take last year when he said Tom Brady wasn’t a generational talent like Patrick Mahomes. This is the same former Pittsburgh Steelers safety who routinely got burned by Brady and the Patriots from 2006-2013.
It’s never a surprise to see Clark go on TV and take the low-hanging fruit when it comes to the Patriots. He predicted them to miss the playoffs due to teams like Minnesota, Chicago, Green Bay, Denver, and Kansas City being on their schedule this year. Are any of those five teams unequivocally better on paper than the Patriots right now?
The Patriots will have a tougher road this year. That’s not exactly a state secret. They do however play the Steelers, Raiders, and Jets at home over the first six weeks of the season, have the Packers, Vikings, and Browns at home later in the year, and dodged a date with the Lions at Ford Field due to that game being played in Germany. As long as New England can decimate weaker competition like it did in 2025, especially its five games against the Raiders, Jets, and Dolphins, the path to double-digit wins and a playoff berth is clearly on the table for this team.
This is the NFL we're talking about. Teams don’t just luck their way to 10 consecutive wins in the regular season and then reach the Super Bowl. New England was a much better team than it showed in Super Bowl LX. The Patriots are being overlooked at an embarrassing rate at this point, and while fans shouldn’t be surprised by Clark’s comments, he’s hardly the only one who feels that way.
All Patriots fans can do is save receipts and hope for the kind of encore season they know this team is capable of. Mike Vrabel and company will at least have plenty of bulletin-board material.
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