The Patriots open the season on Wednesday night in Seattle, against the team that beat them 29-13 in February. The schedule is the league's doing. What New England did with the seven months in between is the story.
The night in Santa Clara
For three quarters the championship game was a field-goal drill. Jason Myers kicked four of them, Seattle led 9-0 at the half and 12-0 after three, and the Patriots' offense, which had carried a 14-3 season, produced 48 passing yards and four first downs before the break. They punted on every possession of the first half that did not end in a kneel.
Drake Maye's final line reads better than the game did: 27 of 43 for 295 yards and two touchdowns, with two interceptions. Most of that came after Seattle went up 19-0 in the fourth quarter. He was sacked six times, lost a fumble to a Derick Hall strip, and threw the pass that Uchenna Nwosu carried 45 yards for the touchdown that made it 29-7. Kenneth Walker III ran 27 times for 135 yards and took the game's MVP award on the other side.
The team's own film review afterward put a number on the problem: a 43.4 percent pressure rate, with pressures charged to four of the five linemen and two sacks on left guard Jared Wilson. Mike Macdonald's defense, the top-ranked unit in the league, blitzed with its defensive backs and rotated its safeties after the snap, and the Patriots did not have an answer. When Seattle sent extra rushers, Maye went 4 of 10 for 22 yards with an interception.
The problem had been there all season
The championship game was not the first time it happened. It was the fourth in a row. Maye was sacked at least five times in every playoff game, the first quarterback in league history to be, and he had already taken 47 sacks in the regular season while completing 72 percent of his passes, a franchise record, for 4,394 yards and 31 touchdowns. He was the runner-up for MVP by five points, and the sacks did not stop in January.
Some of that is on him. Maye extends plays, and he ran for 450 yards and four touchdowns because of it, which is also how a quarterback ends up on the ground. But the film in February found a line losing one-on-one blocks against a four-man rush, and a passing game that had no plan for a corner blitz. A 14-3 team with the Coach of the Year, the Assistant Coach of the Year and an MVP runner-up lost the biggest game of the year to a defense that found the one thing it could not handle.
What they did about it
They rebuilt the interior of the line first. Center Garrett Bradbury, charged with five pressures in the title game, was traded to Chicago on March 6 for a 2027 fifth-round pick. Alijah Vera-Tucker was signed on a three-year, $42 million deal to play left guard, which moves Wilson, who started there in February, to center. In the draft they traded up from 31 to 28 for Utah tackle Caleb Lomu, and Will Campbell and Morgan Moses keep the edges. Vera-Tucker has been a full participant all camp.
Then they changed the receiving corps around Maye. Stefon Diggs was released on March 4, one year into his contract. Romeo Doubs signed from Green Bay for four years and up to $80 million. And on June 1 the Patriots sent a 2028 first-round pick and a 2027 fifth to Philadelphia for A.J. Brown, a three-time All-Pro who put up 5,034 yards in four seasons with the Eagles and went over 1,000 again last year in 15 games. Brown is 29. By late July he and Maye were connecting on deep balls in practice, and Maye's answer to whether he would lean on him was plain: "It could be the fifth play in a row, I'm going to give him the rock."
The defense that allowed 18.8 points a game got older and deeper rather than reinvented. Dre'Mont Jones came in on a three-year, $39.5 million contract for the edge. Kevin Byard, 32, with 36 career interceptions and seven last season in Chicago, signed for a year at safety. Second-round pick Gabe Jacas adds a pass rusher who missed most of the summer after a knee procedure in May. And Zak Kuhr, who called the defense last season while Terrell Williams stepped away for medical treatment, was promoted to coordinator on February 17, with Williams moving to assistant head coach. Josh McDaniels stays in charge of the offense.
What still has to get better
The protection, obviously, and not only the blocking. Seattle's blitzes worked because they were well timed and because the Patriots had no quick answer for them. A better guard and a bigger receiver help; so does a quarterback who has now seen what a top defense will do to him in a game that size. Maye said afterward that he would like "to go back to the beginning and redo it." Wednesday is the closest thing to that he will get.
Tackling was the quieter failure in February. The film review counted 18 missed tackles, and Walker's 135 yards were built on 88 of them after contact. Kuhr's defense gave up 18.8 points a game last season; the version that shows up in Seattle will be judged on whether the first man gets Walker down.
The kicking game is a watch item. Andy Borregales missed three of five in the preseason opener, from 56, 55 and 49 yards, then went 6 for 6 through narrowed goalposts at the next practice. In a 10-7 conference championship played in the snow, the difference between the two was the whole season.
And there is a contract to settle. Christian Gonzalez, whose interception with 2:11 left sent them to the title game, is still without an extension. ESPN's Adam Schefter reported the sides have not been close, and the talks are reported to be about structure and total dollars after Devon Witherspoon reset the cornerback market in Seattle at $33 million a year. Vrabel's position is public: the team is working to keep him, he said, "for as long as certainly I'm here."
The fantasy read
Maye finished last season as one of the best quarterbacks in fantasy without a receiver like Brown. Now he has Brown and Doubs, and a line that was bought and drafted to keep him upright, so he belongs in the top tier at the position and the case for him got stronger over the summer. Brown is the WR1 in this offense and should be drafted like it. Doubs is the value, a second receiver in an offense that scored 58 touchdowns and threw for 4,394 yards through Maye alone. Rhamondre Stevenson and TreVeyon Henderson split a backfield that produced 22 rushing touchdowns, so both stay startable, with Henderson the one whose role can still grow.
None of it counts until Wednesday. Seattle's defense will bring the same blitzes and the same rotations, and the Patriots will find out in one night whether seven months of work answered them. A year ago this team was coming off 4-13. It is a strange kind of progress that the question now is whether they can beat the champions on the road in the opener, but that is where the 2025 season left them, and they spent the offseason acting like a team that expects to be back.