The New England Patriots are undoubtedly still getting over the 29-13 loss in the Super Bowl to the Seattle Seahawks. It’s been a few weeks now, and they’ve had some time to gather themselves. However, if they still need some advice on how to deal with such a situation, one of their own, Tom Brady, has offered some advice on how to put aside the bad feelings and tackle the next season head-on.
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Notably, Brady lost three Super Bowls in his career, so his advice should not be discounted, as he also won a few after these losses.
Brady’s Pats didn’t just lose Super Bowl LX, though. They got dominated, not being able to score until the fourth quarter, and all the doubts about their legitimacy came to the surface. Most notably, their MVP runner-up QB Drake Maye turned the ball over three times and finished with a QBR of 16.3.
After tough losses like these, Brady said he used to feel like Andy Dufresne in The Shawshank Redemption. He’d be sitting on the bus, stunned by the results, wondering how everything went so wrong. But once those feelings subsided, he was always faced with a reality check about the expectations going into the next season.
“Once the victory parties were done or the pity parties were over, what we were left with as a team was the reality of our circumstances going into the next season,” Brady wrote in his weekly newsletter, 199.
For Brady, those three losses in the Big Game stuck with him almost as much as the seven wins. He thinks this is because the margin between winning and losing can be thin. However, when he lost, he was often too hard on himself, when in reality he was much closer to winning the Lombardi than he may have thought.
“When we lose, we often go through our failures with a fine-tooth comb. We’re hard on ourselves, unforgiving. And yet, when we win, we can forgive a lot. It’s easy to gloss over the details when you have a ring on your finger or a medal around your neck,” Brady said.
This is to say that winning often builds complacency. It can foster a false sense of security at times, which can lead to decreased effort, motivation, and an overall decline in performance. The best teams find ways to overcome this inevitable attitude. We’ll see if the Seahawks can do just that.
For the Pats, they probably think that they weren’t close to winning in the Super Bowl. But they were most likely a lot closer than they thought. After all, Maye did have a chance to cut it to a one-score game before he threw what ended up being the game-ending interception with 8:49 left to play.
In the case of both the Pats and Seahawks, though, Brady expects them to be fearless and learn from their actions.
“The Seahawks and the Patriots… will not be afraid to tackle their next mountains. The guys who lead those teams are not afraid to do the work, to make the tough decisions, to take the big risks,” Brady noted. “Now, they each have their own advantage over other teams and competitors if they take the time to learn the big lessons the Super Bowl can teach them.”
We’ll just have to wait and see if both teams will be up to running it back next season. The Seahawks seem to have a nice stable of defensive talent to fall back on, and now a Super Bowl-winning QB in Sam Darnold. But the Pats had doubts surrounding them, and they will need to prove the doubters wrong in 2026.
If New England can heed the advice of Brady, they could learn a lot. They undoubtedly have already learned something in the wake of losing the Big Game. As TB12 said, victory and defeat are often a 51-49 proposition. But guys like Maye can always learn more by soaking up the knowledge of the GOAT.
