When the New England Patriots drafted Drake Maye, I swore I wouldn’t buy a jersey until he won a playoff game.
I was so hurt by Mac Jones. The criterion couldn’t be “make the playoffs,” because Mac had made the playoffs and been blasted by the Bills 47-17 in 2021. So I decided: until I invested the confusingly high dollar amount in an official, brand-safe Drake Maye jersey for my collection, he had to win a playoff game.
But I couldn’t make it. By the middle of this year, Maye was so clearly that guy. After he beat the Bills in Buffalo on Sunday Night Football, it was inevitable. I broke my one hard and fast rule, and bought the incredibly expensive but incredibly cool-looking lightish-blue NFL Rivalry Jersey, with the number 10 and MAYE emblazoned on the back.
You know when you park at a big parking lot and have to get the ticket validated to not super overpay for parking? Like you walk into the REI and go to the little machine for the sticker so the spot costs $6.50 for the hour instead of $49.75—you get it. That’s what Drake Maye accomplished against the Chargers. He validated my parking. The jersey was redeemed. Never wrong, just early.
Like my jersey collection, the Patriots are in business after embarrassing the poor Chargers on Sunday Night. The Pats lost the turnover battle, and Los Angeles had absolutely nothing. The Pats blitzed on every down, and Los Angeles had absolutely nothing. As far as what the quarterbacks brought to the party, Drake Maye admittedly had very little, but Justin Herbert had, say it with me now, absolutely nothing.
But while this season will continue against the Texans next week, and its memory will be dictated by how the next one-to-three rounds go (if they win the Super Bowl you bet your britches this article will be historically irrelevant) it’s worth taking stock of what this season was in the abstract. Playoff wins, strength of schedule, and MVP-award agnostic, this Patriots season has gone impossibly well.
Draft picks? Gravy — Will Campbell and Jared Wilson are healthy, TreVeyon Henderson might be him and Craig Woodson, Andy Borragales and Joshua Farmar are high caliber players. Free agents? Killed it — the expensive ones; Carlton Davis, Morgan Moses, Stefon Diggs and Milton Williams are all nasty, and the cheap ones; Jack Gibbens, Christian Ellis, and Jaylinn Hawkins (among others) are all big time contributors. Superstars? Supertar-ing — Maye and Christian Gonzalez had incredible years. Schedule? Easy — but then they actually used their easy schedule to win basically every game. When “problematic Mack Hollins injured reserve timeline” is the biggest complaint I can lodge, we are cooking with vegetable oil and making some delicious fried rice. It’s all about mixing a little chili oil in the soy sauce before adding it to the wok. Try it, seriously.
That doesn’t even factor in the coaching change to Mike Vrabel, who is above and around all those smaller success stories. Coaches can obviously make or break teams, but the amount of individual successes across the board is suspicious without counting Vrabel and Josh McDaniels for quite a lot.
For most in the national media, the Patriots season revolved around two concepts: the number one seed and the MVP award. New England will probably go 0-2 in those respects, already losing the top seed to Denver and with Matthew Stafford having the inside track on the MVP. A lot of those debates wound up centering on “the schedule,” which my friends and I jokingly began to refer to Drake Maye as to taunt the haters when he made a great throw. An example, “great performance by the schedule today, he threw 5 TDs and didn’t even finish the 3rd quarter!”
The schedule was, admittedly, hilariously easy. Per actual data metrics, it was the easiest in NFL history. Per my less-data-driven metric of looking at the teams all in a row and saying “wow, that’s really easy, we might win like 14 games lol,” it was really easy. But as the great fictional naval aviator Maverick said in Top Gun: Maverick “it’s not the plane, it’s the pilot.”
The Patriots won lots of games against an easy schedule, but they are a good team precisely because they won all those games. It’s one thing to say that there are 14 wins on the schedule, another entirely to actually pull it off and secure 2-3 home playoff games. And for how much flak New England has gotten for their schedule, particularly in the MVP department, people may forget they were 4-13 last year. Upping that to 14 wins is ridiculous, no matter how many paid actors you play along the way.
This is actually what the NFL wants. Schedules are determined by previous year’s record and division position, part of why the Washington Commanders were so successful last year (post being bad) and so bad this year (post being good). And the Patriots will almost certainly fall back to earth next year with a much harder schedule. That’s how the system works, and it’s working.
What the season means, then, (unless they win the Super Bowl) is all the small success stories. The free agent and draft classes that were so good, it feels statistically unlikely. The revelation that the Patriots have their franchise quarterback and long-term coach. The correction of half a decade of embarrassment and incompetence to measured, professional football that is befitting of the Patriot name. The final shift away from dynasty credit-grabbing and Robert Kraft-Bill Belichick feuds to a new regime poised to start the next dynasty. The Patriots could have lost to the Chargers, and I still could have written all that earnestly.
Do I acknowledge how unfair it is that my Patriots are already good and exciting again after dominating the conference for my entire life? Yes. Do I feel just a little bit bad for the Dolphins and Jets, who just had to deal with Tom Brady for 20 years, then immediately got hit with Josh Allen for 7 (and counting) and now might get another 15 of Drake Maye? Yes. But does any of that diminish how fun and lovable this team is? Nope.
And they really are lovable. Nothing is stale, there are no calcified holdovers from previous regimes being paid god knows what to do god knows what. Every success is fresh and exciting. It’s a total honeymoon, and may all come crashing down to reality in any number of spectacular and crushing ways.
But just, for a moment, imagine: if this team; this glorious, lovable, 99% Gallup Poll approval rating, certified box office fresh, 98% on Rotten Tomatoes team, wins the Super Bowl? I am going to become insufferable. Months of articles, posts on the Feed, phone conversations, texts with my grandma, diary entries, Instagram captions, smoke signals, interpretive dances — the works; will all be exclusively about this team. So we all better hope that doesn’t happen.
