Super Bowls are won in the trenches. Defense wins championships. Schedule merchants need not apply.
The New England Patriots almost rode their Most Valuable Schedule to the promised land. But in one of the most emphatic repudiations in NFL playoff history, the Patriots were shellacked 29-13 in Super Bowl LX by the Seattle Seahawks.
It’s almost laughable that the final box score looks as close as it does. The Seahawks barely won the yardage battle (335-331), they only had two more first downs, (20-18), did worse on third downs (4-of-16 vs. 6-of-15) by 15 percentage points, and if you didn’t know any better, you’d think this was a close game until it was blown open by its only three turnovers, all from the Patriots in the final 16 minutes, including a pick-six.
But this really wasn’t close. The Seahawks kept settling for field goals while forcing the Patriots to punt eight times in a row (ignoring the kneeldown for halftime). Then the game’s first turnover happened in the final minute of the third quarter in predictable fashion (a Drake Maye strip-sack), and that led to the only offensive touchdown for the Seahawks from 37 yards out to make it 19-0 with 13:24 left.
It was only in those final 13:24 when Maye passed for 235 yards, reportedly the most in any quarter in Super Bowl history (Doug Williams had 228 in the second quarter of Washington’s 42-10 rout of the 1987 Broncos). But Maye also had 130 of those yards after his pick-six made it 29-7 with 4:27 left. Garbage time intensifies.
That means Maye had 21 net passing yards in the game’s first 46 minutes. He was the one seeing ghosts, and now Sam Darnold is a Super Bowl champion, and we have to deal with the fallout of people thinking the Seahawks are a legendary team after one of the strangest seasons in NFL history.
But I can’t say the ending wasn’t satisfying as it would have been terrible for all discourse if this New England schedule was rewarded with an MVP award for Maye and a Super Bowl ring for that organization. Not this way.
For one last time until September, let’s recap the game with brutal honesty.
This season in NFL Stat Oddity:
- Week 1
- Week 2
- Week 3
- Week 4
- Week 5
- Week 6
- Week 7
- Week 8
- Week 9
- Week 10
- Week 11
- Week 12
- Week 13
- Week 14
- Week 15
- Week 16
- Week 17
- Week 18
- Wild Card
- Divisional Round
- Conference Championship
Seahawks vs. Patriots: The Young Pup Bowl
Before the game even started, I had some people confused on Twitter when I said this was the lowest-stakes Super Bowl since 2000 Ravens vs. Giants. I may have even been generous there as 2000 was about Baltimore solidifying itself as an all-time great defense, a reputation it’d keep up throughout the rest of Ray Lewis’ career as a franchise led by its defense. Then you can argue 1999 had the same impact on Kurt Warner and the GSOT Rams.
But the point I was making was that Super Bowls are about building legacies. Look at the Super Bowls since and you had Warner and those Rams trying to become a dynasty in 2001, only to give birth to one for the Patriots where every subsequent appearance meant more legacy building for Brady and Belichick. Then you had moments like 2005 when Bill Cowher and Jerome Bettis really needed to finish that road trip with a ring to lock up their Canton busts while Mike Holmgren could have solidified his own if he became the first coach to win a Super Bowl for two different teams.
Year after year, more of the same like when top-tier quarterbacks had to make sure they solidified their legacy with a ring in their first Super Bowl appearance like Peyton Manning (2006), Drew Brees (2009), Aaron Rodgers (2010), and Patrick Mahomes (2019) all did.
Last year, it was all about the three-peat for the Chiefs and how legendary that would make that team while the Eagles were looking for revenge from two years earlier. Big-time stuff.
All that legacy stuff? Practically absent from this matchup with it being Year 1 for these quarterback-coach duos with these teams, and most of their star players are either too young (JSN, Milton Williams, Witherspoon, Byron Murphy, etc.) for legacy talk or it’s veterans like DeMarcus Lawrence, Cooper Kupp (too many injuries), or Stefon Diggs who really have no shot at the HOF either way.
Two quarterbacks still in their twenties who aren’t going to be rushed into the elite class with a win except for the efforts by the New England fanbase and media to do so for Maye. But boy, after the postseason Maye just had? They need to walk that the fvck back some.
So, if you thought this Super Bowl lacked some sizzle coming in, that’s the reason. Just not a lot to be gained from a legacy standpoint. As for what the outcome will do for the future, we can only speculate, and I’ll do that at the end (and more in depth later this week).
The First Half Tells
Again, I did not find this Super Bowl to be difficult to predict or size up this week. I said the quarterbacks were not going to impress (they didn’t), a non-quarterback would win MVP (he did), there’d be a return touchdown (there was), and the defense that caused more damage with splash plays would win the game (they did).
I just didn’t think Seattle would be so dominant in the splash play area, winning turnovers 3-0 and sacks 6-1. If you watched the first few drives, you could see each quarterback playing up to (or down to) expectations too. Darnold had some very risky throws that could have been picks in tight windows. Maye took a couple of early sacks as he tends to do. It was going to be about who manages to avoid the biggest mistakes.
But if you watched those early Darnold throws with the Patriots aggressively jumping routes, you would have been shocked to learn that he ended this game with no picks on 38 attempts. I sensed one coming early. NBC’s Cris Collinsworth did too based on his commentary, and I’m sure millions watching the game did as well. But it never happened.
That really ended up being the key to Seattle winning this Super Bowl. Remember, the Seahawks were minus-4 in turnover differential going into Week 18, and Darnold led all quarterbacks in giveaways. But from Week 18 against the 49ers with the No. 1 seed on the line through the three playoff games, the Seahawks were +8 with 8 takeaways, no giveaways, and that’s how they won every game.
But I think it was a good gameplan early by Mike Macdonald to blitz the corner (Witherspoon) as a new wrinkle (something Witherspoon did twice as much more in 2023-24) to throw off Maye, who looked physically fine (the shoulder) but mentally overwhelmed. I also didn’t think much of Josh McDaniels’ gameplan as he kept up to his reputation with no first-quarter touchdowns in a 10th-straight Super Bowl. But where were the screens, the trick plays, the designed QB runs? Pretty lacking all night to battle what both sides seemed to realize was a blocking mismatch.
When Will Campbell said at the draft that he’d die to protect Drake Maye, I didn’t think he meant he’d take the whole team out in a suicide bombing. But the charting numbers out there are suggesting he allowed 14 pressures himself in the Super Bowl, which sounds astronomically high and hard to believe.
But it was pretty telling early on how little respect both defenses had for the opposing quarterback with the way they were blitzing from all angles and jumping routes. Very aggressive styles that you just wouldn’t see if Patrick Mahomes or (God forbid) Josh Allen were playing in this game. The Patriots running the ball on a 3rd-and-5 early in the second quarter especially felt defeatist. Like they knew their only hope was Darnold to make some Jarrett Stidham-like mistakes and give them a short field.
However, Kenneth Walker’s runs of 30 and 29 yards on the same drive led to the second field goal and a 6-0 lead. The Seahawks running on 3rd-and-12 in the red zone also felt like an admission from Seattle that being conservative as hell was the plan tonight.
Darnold missed a couple of touchdown opportunities to JSN, who was held to 27 yards on 4-of-10 passing and also left the game temporarily for a concussion check. Christian Gonzalez and company did their job on the OPOY, though some Darnold inaccuracies helped the numbers stay down.
Still, Seattle kicked a third field goal and led 9-0 at halftime, just the fifth Super Bowl without a first-half touchdown.
The Third Quarter (Struggle Is Real)
At halftime, the Seahawks were up 183-51 in yards. Maye had just 29 yards on 15 dropbacks, so all that “it’s the weather” bullshit his fans tried selling people on his postseason was in fact bullshit. This looked an awful lot like the impotence he showed in Denver before a speck of snow hit the ground.
Yet, the game still felt close enough and Darnold was shaky enough (late on throws and just 9/22 for 88 yards) to think the Patriots could get back in this game. But I was very surprised at how bad they were in the third quarter. Maye had a 2-for-10 success rate in the quarter. His throws were largely off, and after the Seahawks started the half with another field goal drive to make it 12-0 (arguably Darnold’s best drive all night with two 16-yard passes and an 11-yard scramble), I was shocked at the next sequence from Vrabel and McDaniels.
After getting to the New England 41 after a Henderson run, the Patriots soon faced 3rd-and-1 after he was stuffed for no gain. Do you go sneak? Do you run Stevenson or Henderson again? You do something easy to move the chains, right? Instead, they looked like they wanted to set up a deep shot all along and Maye ended up throwing an incomplete pass to Pop Douglas.
Just to get some spark going for your offense in a 12-0 game, I felt like Vrabel needed to go for this. What happened to the coach who said he’d cut off his dick to win a Super Bowl? Looked like he had his balls snipped instead. The Patriots just punted it back, and they were fortunate that Milton Williams came through with their only sack of the night to instantly derail the drive for another three-and-out.
But then Maye took his fourth sack of the night, then couldn’t convert a 3rd-and-4, leading to another three-and-out. I think these three straight three-and-out drives followed by the game’s first turnover on a strip-sack are really where New England lost this game. They just couldn’t get anything going out of the locker room after a long halftime while Seattle still wasn’t doing anything special offensively, and the nerves should have been less of an issue a half into the game. But they didn’t do anything.
And sure enough, it was a strip-sack that led to Maye’s first turnover of the night, putting the Seahawks 37 yards away from the end zone, the only way they were able to get this offense a touchdown all night. That’s what Seattle has largely been doing since November. That also marks four straight playoff games where Maye took at least 5 sacks, a record.
The Fourth Quarter
Darnold made one of the best plays of the night by converting a 3rd-and-9 to Cooper Kupp, then A.J. Barner was wide open for a 16-yard touchdown. We finally got a touchdown in this game with 13:24 left. At that point, with eight punts and a fumble, you had to question if the Patriots would be the first team in Super Bowl history to get shut out.
But in under a minute, the Patriots got into the end zone with Maye finding Mack Hollins open deep for quick gains of 24 and 35 yards. Where was that all night? Another big mistake by Vrabel going for the extra point. You have to try to make it 19-8, giving yourself a chance at 8+3 instead of keeping it a 12-point game and needing two touchdowns for sure on such a tough night of scoring the ball. Again, he coached very conservatively.
After a quick punt from Seattle, there was still almost 11 minutes left in this game. Crazier things have happened. But this drive is where I felt Maye really blew it. You have time to go on a long touchdown drive, make it 19-14, then all the pressure falls back on Seattle to do something cause even a field goal would keep it a one-possession game at 22-14. But instead of doing so, Maye got into panic mode. He threw a deep ball into triple coverage from his own 17 on first down and that should have been picked but two Seahawks fought for the ball and no one got it.
Then after a 16-yard scramble on a third down, it felt like Maye was getting into a rhythm near midfield. This was far from over. Then two snaps later, he threw a horrific deep ball that was picked off and returned 35 yards to the New England 38 with 8:37 left. Forget about it. The pick was so bad even Collinsworth was left speechless.
The Seahawks played it safe and added a field goal for a 22-7 lead with 5:35 left. Again, it’s not actually over yet. That’s the real kicker too as it’s not like New England needed a superhuman effort from Maye in this game. They just needed him to do some of the things Darnold did like complete some passes in the 8-16 yard range, use your legs that are better than his, and protect the ball. But he didn’t do that.
After converting on 3rd-and-8 to little-used Hunter Henry, pressure got to Maye again and it ended up in a pick-six that was originally ruled a fumble, which would have set a record with his eighth fumble of the postseason. Instead, it goes down as his second pick in the Super Bowl, and he tied the single-season record for the playoffs with 7 fumbles and set the new record with 21 sacks (Joe Burrow had 19 in 2021).
It was 29-7 with 4:27 left, and now you can say it was over. A little touchdown drive in garbage time made it 29-13, then the Seahawks almost answered that too with a 49-yard run by Walker that was called back for holding in a game where officiating wasn’t even a topic for a change. You know it was a beatdown when people aren’t complaining about the zebras in a Super Bowl. Seattle punted and Maye padded some passing yardage to get to 295 to end the game. One of the most misleading boxscores you’ll see.
And like that, it was over. Another Super Bowl in the books where the No. 1 defense dominated an overmatched offensive line. The underdog Patriots sure didn’t play with much fire or passion or living up to the underdog role. There were a few opportunities to make this a game and they missed practically all of them. A pretty forgettable Super Bowl overall.
The truth is this is another season where the Patriots robbed us of a better Super Bowl matchup. Not nearly as bad as not seeing a rematch of Dan Marino’s Dolphins with the 1985 Bears, but I think a healthy Bo Nix and Sean Payton make a game of this in the fourth quarter, to say nothing of the Bills or Jaguars. There wasn’t a single fourth-quarter lead change in the playoff games the Patriots and Seahawks played this year. The other games had 14, a single-season record.
I said 2025 Sam Darnold was like 1991 Mark Rypien on the Redskins, right down to beating up on a schedule merchant in the Super Bowl. Turns out the little time the Seahawks spent trailing this postseason was also on par with that team.
Kenneth Walker ended up winning Super Bowl MVP, the first time a running back wins it since Terrell Davis for the 1997 Broncos. Long time ago. Not exactly a traditional MVP performance since he had 59 of those yards on two plays on one field goal drive, and he didn’t score a touchdown. But I guess it was another one of those games where so many defenders played well that they couldn’t isolate one with stats to give the MVP to, so they just picked an offensive player. Like what happened last year with the Eagles.
But make no mistakes about it. Seattle’s defense led the charge on this win two weeks after the offense picked up the slack against the Rams in the NFC Championship Game, the real Super Bowl this year.
Patriots Learned Some Hard Truths
Okay, it’s time for me to get into smarmy Bill Maher mode and get on the 2025 Patriots for this poor showing to end a weak season.
The Patriots won’t and don’t have to apologize for making the Super Bowl ahead of schedule. But it wouldn’t surprise me one bit if we never see them make it back with Maye and Vrabel. Anyone who thinks otherwise hasn’t studied NFL history as Dan Marino and Don Shula went to the Super Bowl in Year 2 (1984) together and guess what? Neither ever made it back.
Other more recent quarterbacks like Donovan McNabb, Matt Hasselbeck, Colin Kaepernick, Cam Newton, Matt Ryan, and Jared Goff all lost their first Super Bowl and have yet to make it back. Drew Brees and Aaron Rodgers won their only Super Bowls in 2009-10 and never got back despite several more great seasons at a level of quarterback play that’s a tier above anything we watched in the 2025 season.
No one knows if they’ll ever be back to the Super Bowl, so you do treat every opportunity as gold.
And I didn’t get a good sense from the Patriots that they took this opportunity seriously enough. More of a “glad to be here” vibe with this team, and maybe that makes sense when you look at the half-assed effort they had on offense in the postseason once they started to play good defenses. Teams like the Jets and Dolphins don’t make the playoffs, you know.
Rarely will you see so many arguments validated by one postseason, but the knock on the 2025 Patriots for being a schedule merchant couldn’t have been more right on. They even kept getting breaks in the playoffs every week with major injuries to their opposing offenses, which is why the defense looked so dominant after rarely displaying such skill in the regular season.
Yes, they tackled well and limited explosive plays, but their schedule was also pure ass. Seattle was finally a healthy offense, and while they didn’t do a ton in this game, they didn’t have to. Sound familiar?
We also can see the weather excuse for New England was bullshit. Unless climate change has produced invisible snow and wind in the state of California, that game was played in near-70-degree weather and clear skies. No issues with a slippery surface or bad turf.
Just bad offense from the Patriots not unlike what we saw all postseason.
As it turns out, who you play is very important in the NFL. Probably the most important thing as matchups dictate outcomes in this league. Yet, I can think of at least 23 MVP voters who seemed to forget that this year when they still let Maye get this close to that award after the season he had against the schedule he faced.
He was 1-2 against winning teams in the regular season, and the Steelers and Bills didn’t necessarily have elite defenses this year either. Once he started playing winning teams backed up by good defenses like the Chargers, Texans, Broncos, and Seahawks in the playoffs, you saw the dramatic drop-off in his stats across the board.
Then one of the common arguments used for his MVP case, used as recently as the other day on TV, was common opponents. I’m supposed to believe that because Stafford had a few more picks on the road against the Falcons and Panthers in high-scoring losses that that makes Maye’s season superior based on a six-game sample.
Okay, you want to see Patriots fans abandon that argument quick? Run the full numbers now that they’ve both played Seattle and Houston too:
- Matthew Stafford (11 games): 64% completions, 277.7 passing yards per game, 26 TD, 7 INT, 8.15 YPA, 16 sacks, 6 fumbles, 2 lost, 8.03 ANY/A
- Drake Maye (8 games): 67.5% completions, 258.6 passing yards per game, 18 TD, 6 INT, 8.62 YPA, 27 sacks, 10 fumbles, 5 lost, 7.54 ANY/A
Way more sacks and fumbles for Maye, who drops almost half a full yard in ANY/A from Stafford in these games against the same opponents. Stafford played great in his last two games at Seattle despite the losses being on the defense and special teams. Meanwhile, his third-worst game against Seattle was still better than Maye’s Super Bowl was.
Maye just does not step up against better competition. He’s now 0-5 in the NFL when he throws more than 30 passes against a winning team. He’s 1-8 when he throws more than 35 passes against anyone in the NFL. He has a long way to go to prove he’s an elite quarterback capable of hanging with the best, putting the team on his back, winning shootouts, leading comebacks that aren’t just freebies against Baltimore, and so much more.
Everything was rushed on this kid, and he clearly isn’t at that level yet. Maybe he gets there, and maybe this is as good as it gets in the Maye era. A bad Super Bowl loss. Only time will tell, but I’m not ready to pencil in the Patriots to win the 2026 AFC East.
Another One Bites the Dust
That will wrap up the 2025 NFL season, my 15th season of full-time coverage. Don’t really have more than a pot to piss in for a retirement plan, but maybe this offseason will be beneficial to me in many ways as I hope to get some new databases and metrics created to better help my in-season content.
Also plan to get my health back on an improving track after slacking off these last few months. The end of the season is a stress reliever, and it’s even greater when the Super Bowl ends in a satisfying way as this one did.
I’ll be writing Monday night (for Tuesday) about lessons learned from the 2025 NFL season, but if you want a quick teaser on that, I’m asking the question straight up: How many of these “new contenders” in 2025 will have already peaked this season?
- Seahawks (good chance this is the peak of the mountain)
- Patriots
- Bears
- Jaguars
- Broncos
- Texans
- Panthers (technically won the division)
I think it’s possible a lot of them never match or improve on their success this year, but we’ll just have to wait and see. It’s going to be an interesting offseason to ask a lot of questions about the 10 new head coaches, and if the number I read is correct, 21 new offensive coordinators around the NFL. Lots of chances for quick turnarounds in 2026 and questioning if the teams who dominated turnovers (Bears) or close games (Bears again, Broncos), or if the schedule merchants (Patriots, Broncos again) can get it done again.
I plan on watching more movies and TV shows, maybe subscribing to the Criterion Channel to tackle the top 5,000 films list on TSPDT better, and working on more NFL stats and hopefully reading less Twitter. But we’ll see as I may want to dabble in video content if it proves to be rewarding/worth the time.
But I need to tackle my offseason approach differently this year as I just can’t keep wasting time arguing on Twitter with bots/scumbags/dumb people. Time is too precious, and we’re running out of it daily.
So, I want a different kind of offseason because I can’t just stomach daily doses of hearing how some overrated schedule merchant lucked his way to a Super Bowl he shit the bed in, and how Mahomes is “washed” and “never going to be good again”. Screw those people. I put in the work and am confident in my predictions. You can’t change their minds.
I just have to keep putting out good content, backed by facts, and let that speak for itself. And Seattle fans, you’re welcome for that reverse jinx. Still feel like you might owe me for Super Bowls 47-48, but given what happened in XL, I guess we can call it even enough.
Until our rooting interests converge again…
Captain Comeback: NFL Analysis by Scott Kacsmar 