The New England Patriots are in their first Super Bowl since Tom Brady left in 2019. Now, after righting his listing ship, Robert Kraft has made decisions that have gotten his franchise back on track.
Kraft's Patriots drafted Drake Maye in 2024, and hired Mike Vrabel a year later. Yet, none of that was enough to get the franchise's greatest hero, Tom Brady, on board with the Patriots in Super Bowl LX. He's staying out of the fight.
Regardless, the Patriots will take the field without the support of the only player in team history to have a statue outside Gillette Stadium. It's up to Vrabel, Maye and company to get the job done on the field, no matter who's rooting for them.
Patriots fans get cold shoulder as Tom Brady sits out Super Bowl run
As a part-owner of another franchise, the Las Vegas Raiders, Tom Brady has grounds to stay on the sidelines while his former team plays in the Super Bowl for the first time in seven years. One might consider that a solid reason to stay out of the fight.
The fact that the Patriots have built a Tom Brady statue isn't enough to get Brady to root for the Patriots in Super Bowl LX: "I don't have a dog in the fight in this one. May the best team win." https://t.co/Pu4rKSwUZ4
— ProFootballTalk (@ProFootballTalk) February 3, 2026
On the other hand, while Brady's clear conflict of interest as part-owner of the Raiders may have mattered in this decision, it certainly hasn't elsewhere. He's a regular FOX Sports analyst on telecasts of NFL games.
Whether Brady is rooting for the Patriots will make no difference to Mike Vrabel, Drake Maye, and their team when they take the field against the highly favored Seattle Seahawks. In fact, all 11 ESPN analysts who voted selected the Seahawks as the likely winner.
ESPN's ridiculous snub, and now Brady's decision to stay on the sidelines while the team he took to six Super Bowl wins plays for a seventh Lombardi Trophy, might be just a bit more motivation for Mike Vrabel's "Road Warriors."
While a poor look, Brady's rooting interest really isn't an issue for the Patriots. It's stopping Sam Darnold and Jaxon Smith-Njigba, and scoring points. While Brady's snub may be a bitter pill to swallow for Patriots Nation, which for 20 years stood behind him, his not rooting for his former team is not important. Only scoring more points than Seattle is.
A win by Drake Maye and the establishment of a new era of excellence in Foxborough by winning Super Bowl LX is all that matters. Tom Brady can root for any team he wants. Patriots Nation is run by Mike Vrabel, Drake Maye, and their cohorts now, and winning the team's seventh Lombardi Trophy is all the incentive they need.