There’s never a bad time to make your championship debut, but in the case of Drake Maye and the New England Patriots, things sure would have been a lot better had they drawn a lesser opponent. The Seattle Seahawks, and more specifically their defense, are the most problematic unit in all of professional football right now, and if the Patriots aren’t careful, they’ll be forced to find out why.
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The 292 points that they allowed throughout the 2025 regular season were the fewest of any team in the NFL, and if that wasn’t intimidating enough, they are also hurrying up opposing quarterbacks at a 10.6% rate, which was the third highest rate in the league. Nevertheless, the UNC product declared just moments before the game that he’s planning to take them head on.
“Got a game to win at this point,” Maye noted after stepping onto the Super Bowl field for the first time in his career. “It was a surreal moment to come out here for the first time, but we got a game to win.”
When asked what he believes will be the key to beating this Seattle defense, the 23 year old suggested that his Patriots “just need to play our brand of football.”
“We know they are going to be a tough challenge, we’re going to battle some adversity. Just be us, play for each other, go out there and have some fun.”
While that will certainly be easier said than done considering the fact that Seattle also allowed just the 10th fewest passing yards of any unit this season, if there’s anyone who can take the top off of this defense, it’s the very quarterback who managed 67 passes of 20+ yards this year, which was the second most of any quarterback in the NFL. Those downfield connections with Kayshon Boutte that fans were treated to all season long will need to be prevalent here in order for New England to hoist its seventh Lombardi trophy, but unfortunately for them, anything of meaning has yet to manifest throughout the early goings of this year’s title game.
The Seahawks were the only ones doing anything of note throughout the first 20 minutes of play. Their kicker, Jason Myers, was able to produce a pair of field goals, while their vaunted defense recorded an early pair of sacks on the New England quarterback.
Simply put, there wasn’t much fun to be had in the early goings for Maye and the rest of the Patriots offense, and if they aren’t able to make the necessary adjustments at halftime, then they’ll likely find themselves on the wrong side of history as Seattle finally emerges from the shadow that was cast by Super Bowl XLIX.
