The bottom line from the season-opening loss is this: if Drake Maye takes care of the football, the Patriots beat the defending Super Bowl champions on the road.
If you’re second-guessing Josh McDaniels‘ offensive gameplan, or Mike Vrabel‘s game management … that’s fine, but you’re missing the plot. Maybe you had sky-high offensive expectations considering Maye’s 2025 season, and the additions of A.J. Brown and Romeo Doubs. Maybe you’re a big Maye fan, and you just want to make excuses for him, like in the Super Bowl (he was not hampered physically), and just don’t want to face or hear the truth: Maye lost the game. Period.
Vrabel’s job is to figure out how his team is going to win that week’s game, and be the tip of the spear for in-game adjustments if the game goes another way.
It was quite obvious that the approach, at least offensively, was to take things slow. The last time the Patriots faced Mike Macdonald‘s defense, they were dominated. And that was on a neutral field. The Patriots were going to Lumen Field, the hardest place to play for an offense in the NFL. The Patriots had a lot of new players in new spots who had never played with each other, starting with newcomers Brown, Doubs and Reggie Gilliam. Left guard Alijah Vera-Tucker hadn’t played an NFL game in 612 days. Second-year player Jared Wilson was making his first start at center. TE Eli Raridon was playing his first NFL game.
That’s a lot of new faces and a lot of unknowns playing in the soundgarden that is Lumen. Add in the best defensive line in football, and arguably the best defensive scheme in the game, and it’s no wonder the Patriots took a very cautious approach on offense. The Patriots weren’t going to win the game on offense in the first half, but they could certainly lose it (see, the Super Bowl). The Patriots seemed to take the approach of getting their feet under themselves, playing some meaningful snaps together for the first time in game situations, letting the game declare itself, making adjustments at halftime, and then winning the game in the second half.
It was a perfectly reasonable approach. Vrabel doesn’t get paid to make sure Maye has great stats, or that the offense moves the ball. Vrabel gets paid to win the game, and the Patriots were well on their way to doing that before Maye imploded for no good reason.
“We had the game under control,” Maye said. “Thought we had a good plan to start chipping away and be patient and lost patience and it cost us, decisions that cost us the game on my part. … We can’t have those. We can’t have those. It’s unacceptable.”
Say this about the 24-year-old: he speaks the truth, and isn’t afraid of it.
Now, I do think that Brown’s injury — caused by one of Maye’s multiple poorly thrown balls (Maye put Brown in a bad spot earlier on a high pass, and Maye got Hunter Henry croaked to open the second half) — threw any plans to open up the offense a little out the window.
Do people, even after what you saw in the fourth quarter, really think it would have been wise to open the game up more? Yes, it’s true that Seattle’s secondary was missing people, but on film they were more than sound. There were no weaknesses to exploit, and they often stayed in two deep safeties to limit the big plays. The only way to take them out of that is to prove effective at running the ball. The Patriots had to keep trying, especially since they were tied or held the lead for 54 minutes and 10 seconds.
Why would you play any other way, in that place, against a backup quarterback?
Let’s also not lose sight of the fact that Maye not only cost the team the game, he gave the Seahawks life when they had none. His first two interceptions led to 10 Seahawks points. When Maye threw his first interception, it was 2nd and 9 at the Seattle 45. Patriots had two downs to get the 7 or 8 yards to attempt a field goal, or go for it on fourth down. The Patriots might have gotten that had Maye simply checked the ball down to RB Corey Kiner (the checkdowns were there most of the game because Seattle was dropping their linebackers deep to take away the deep middle of the field — would have been nice to have TreVeyon Henderson‘s speed in this one).
Maye had Stevenson for plenty to win the field position battle on the second interception.
And, of course, the Patriots were already in comfortable field-goal position to tie the game on the final drive.
When the Patriots went up 10-0 and had the ball with under 9 minutes left in the third quarter, I said in the press box, “Vrabel has to be thinking, ‘All we need to do is end every drive with a kick from here on out, and we stand a pretty good chance of winning.'”
At that point, the Patriots had an 80% chance of winning (probably more if the calculations included Drew Lock for Sam Darnold).
Before Maye’s first interception, the Patriots had an 86% chance of winning.
Instead of a field goal, punt, and punt for an opening win. Interception, interception and interception — all, really, unforced — yielded a loss.
That’s it. That was the game.
We do need to discuss Maye, and why he’s a different quarterback against the best defenses (besides the obvious that it’s, you know, hard).
Maye, because he’s so young (just turned 24) and relatively inexperienced, struggles against the defenses that change the picture pre- and post-snap (which Seattle does more than any team). When Maye had a good idea of what he’s going to see after the snap, he plays fast, with conviction and fires the ball.
When Maye is unsure of the coverage he’s getting, that’s when he starts taking extra hitches, his feet pitter-patter, and the hitch in his throwing motion (which I’ve been talking about since he got here) reveals itself. Seahawks safety Julian Love, who read Maye like a book on the second interception, hit the nail on the head ahead of his interception in the Super Bowl.
“Classic young quarterback… he’s confirming [the receiver] is open. He’s not blindly doing it like Stafford.”
Julian Love mic’d up, prior to intercepting Drake Maye in the Super Bowlpic.twitter.com/c30vqQmGmd
— Underdog (@Underdog) February 10, 2026
It’s not unique to young quarterbacks. Tom Brady looked ordinary at times against Rex Ryan‘s defenses (Macdonald learned his disguises under Wink Martindale, a protégé of Ryan’s).
However, Maye’s struggles against the Seahawks remind me a lot of
