Super Bowl LX loss will be blamed on Drake Maye, but it’s more of an indictment on the construction of the Patriots’ roster
Let’s not blame the Super Bowl loss entirely on Drake Maye.
The New England Patriots simply got destroyed by the Seattle Seahawks in Super Bowl LX. There’s no real way to sugarcoat it. It was as bad a beatdown as the Patriots put on the 2018 Los Angeles Rams, and this one will sting for the entire Patriots’ organization.
They ran into a buzzsaw of a defense, but it was also a winnable game at the end of the day. New England’s defense played its tail off, holding Jaxon Smith-Njigba to just 27 total yards and not allowing a single touchdown until the beginning of the fourth quarter.
Unfortunately, the offensive performance was dreadful, and the reflections on that side of the ball in the morning won’t be pretty.
The entire Patriots’ offense was bad, not just Drake Maye
The best way to sum up the Super Bowl loss was that Drake Maye could not continue to elevate what was already an average (at best) offensive roster against the most elite defense in the NFL, much like what happened to Patrick Mahomes in the Super Bowl last year against the Philadelphia Eagles.
The offensive line collapsed any hope the Patriots had of competing in the first half, and Maye tried his best to will the offense into anything in the second half, but he had to resort to reckless hero ball. Seattle mugged up receivers all game long and completely beat the brakes off of New England’s offensive line for four quarters. The Patriots either willfully, or ignorantly, refused to adjust their game plan until it was far too late, and they made no adjustments to anything Seattle threw at them.
This isn’t to excuse Maye from playing what was inarguably the worst game of his career, but he’s also a second-year quarterback playing against a defense that destroyed every QB, except the MVP of the league, and the surrounding cast played pitifully.
I’m not sure what offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels and the rest of the Patriots’ staff were doing all game, but there wasn’t any of the trickery or creativity that has been a hallmark of New England’s offense for decades. Maybe they abandoned all hope once they saw their offensive line, but the play-calling felt emblematic of a team that tried to manage its way to a win rather than a team trying to win. The Patriots never once adjusted to the slot blitzes Seattle repeatedly threw at them.
The Patriots have their quarterback. Don’t listen to anyone who tries to peddle you otherwise. If there’s anything to be learned from this brutal dismantling in the Super Bowl, it’s that New England simply has to improve the talent in the room on offense and cannot afford to be complacent in that area this offseason.
Get a real outside winner at wide receiver (Alec Pierce, anyone?), figure out how to maximize Will Campbell, continue to fill out the trenches on both sides of the ball, and this team is right back in the Super Bowl hunt.
Maye is that guy. Don’t let this Super Bowl performance convince you otherwise.
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