Takeaways from the New England Patriots’ Super Bowl LX Loss

The New England Patriots’ 2025 season was one filled with surprises.

When Mike Vrabel was hired as head coach, his new program was centered around three goals: win the division, host home playoff games, and compete for championships.

After a 1-2 start through three weeks of regular-season play, much of New England was looking for something — anything — to hang its hat on as a sign of improvement over a dismal 2023-24 stretch that ended with a combined 8-26 record.

What followed was a run that saw the Patriots win 16 of their next 17 games — including their first 10-game winning streak in nearly a decade — capture their first AFC East title since 2019, and host two home playoff games en route to the franchise’s record-extending 12th Super Bowl appearance.

With a first-year head coach and a 23-year-old quarterback, the turnaround’s expedited nature was both surprising and unexpected. But as New England entered Super Bowl LX, expectations around the organization had shifted.

Vrabel accomplished his first two goals with relative ease. The third, however, proved to be a mountain too tall for a young group to climb.

The Patriots struggled to stay competitive with the Seattle Seahawks in Super Bowl LX, and the now-champions exposed deficiencies that Vrabel, Josh McDaniels, and the rest of New England’s coaching staff were able to cloak for much of the season.

With the Super Bowl loss officially in the books, let’s peel back the layers and identify exactly what went wrong for the Patriots in the season’s finale.

The most glaring issue for New England on Sunday night was up front — on both sides of the ball.

On first watch, it was easy to spot the Patriots’ problems protecting Drake Maye against a hyper-aggressive Seattle approach. Per PFF, Maye was pressured on 43.4% of his dropbacks in the Super Bowl and completed just 6-of-13 passes (46.2%) for 75 yards, one touchdown, and one interception when facing pressure.

In the days since the game, left tackle Will Campbell has taken the brunt of the blame, but that doesn’t come close to painting the full picture.

Yes, Campbell had his struggles — PFF credited him with eight pressures, while Next Gen Stats clocked him at 14. Neither is pretty for the rookie, but both numbers lack context.

For starters, Campbell was playing through a torn MCL suffered in Cincinnati on November 23 (Week 13). Even after returning for the playoff run, it clearly affected his ability to plant and anchor against the “speed-to-power” rushes that fueled the familiar “kick him inside to guard” discourse.

But it wasn’t just the injury. It was a tendency-breaking schematic approach by the Seahawks that caught New England off guard — and the Patriots were slow to adjust.

During the regular season, Seattle lived in a four-man rush with seven dropping into coverage, sending additional rushers on just 22.3% of plays (seventh-lowest in the league). In Super Bowl LX, the Seahawks ramped up the pressure plan early, blitzing on over 40% of New England’s first-half dropbacks.

Even as the blitz rate drifted back toward their season norms after halftime, the early rush plan did its job: it pinned the Patriots back, created long-yardage situations, and forced Maye to operate on Seattle’s terms. The Seahawks frequently showed pressure to one side, baited Maye into sliding protection that way, then bailed into coverage post-snap and brought heat from the opposite side.

Boundary corner Devon Witherspoon became a featured part of that plan. He blitzed seven times in the Super Bowl (after 21 blitz attempts all season) and recorded three pressures, two quarterback hits, a sack, and a forced fumble. His involvement was something the Patriots clearly weren’t prepared for — and he was hyper-productive in that role.

Pressure got home on Maye quickly. Even with his fastest time-to-throw of the season (2.56 seconds), New England’s quarterback was rendered ineffective in what looked like his most challenging pocket performance of 2025.

It was also one of the rare nights where Maye felt the heat and brought his eyes down to the rush instead of keeping his vision downfield. That doesn’t generally happen with him — especially for a quarterback who led the league in passer rating under pressure during the regular season (90.4).

New England didn’t just lose the battle in the trenches on offense, either. The strength of its front seven had been a defining trait throughout the prior three postseason matchups, where the Patriots held opposing running backs to 2.2 yards per carry.

For one quarter, it looked like that trend would continue. Seattle averaged just 1.8 yards per carry in the first period, but the Seahawks’ heavy dose of outside zone turned the interior strength of Milton Williams and Robert Spillane into a non-factor over the final three quarters.

Kenneth Walker’s patience and creativity on those outside zone concepts took over, as he repeatedly gashed the Patriots on the edges. Walker finished with 27 carries for 135 yards (5.0 yards per carry), keeping Seattle ahead of the sticks and setting up their play-action menu late to open opportunities for Sam Darnold and the passing game.

Darnold was blitzed on 25 of his 28 dropbacks (62.5%), pressured on 18 of them (45.0%), and New England had just one sack to show for it.   

The edges were a problem for the Patriots on both sides of the ball, and they made the down-and-distance battle feel uphill all night. If any personnel deficiency became glaring, it was there.

Seattle took advantage of a New England offensive line that featured two rookies starting next to each other for the first time in Super Bowl history — and they did it in both the pass and run game.

For every short-chunk rush that created positive yardage, there was a negative play that followed, leaving the Patriots in long-yardage situations on second and third down. That restricted the playbook and made the Patriots’ offense feel predictable.

Seattle did boast the league’s best run defense in 2025 (first in EPA per rush and yards per carry), but New England’s lack of early consistency — paired with trailing on the scoreboard — led to a familiar problem: abandoning the run altogether.

Rhamondre Stevenson finished with seven carries for 23 yards. TreVeyon Henderson had six carries for 19. That’s 13 combined rushing attempts between the two, while Maye led the team with 37 rushing yards on five attempts.

Seattle didn’t respect the run, and the Patriots didn’t stay committed to it long enough to force them to.

Much like New England had done to opponents throughout its playoff run, the Seahawks forced the Patriots into a one-dimensional script — and had a plan to rattle Maye in a pure dropback game.

As the offense went cold — a stretch from the end of the first quarter through the end of the third that produced just one total first down — there was no counterpunch.

New England trailed, but seemed to enter desperation mode early. And even while Seattle’s lead only grew in increments of three for most of the night, the Patriots still drifted away from the balanced identity that got them to the Super Bowl in the first place.

Stevenson was electric during the playoff run, leading all NFL backs in attempts (51) and rushing yards (203) entering Super Bowl LX. He faded into the background early, and was never pulled back to the forefront.

The Patriots also didn’t attempt to assert physicality with personnel. After using six offensive linemen on over 40% of their snaps in the AFC Championship Game, New England logged just one snap with that package in Super Bowl LX — and it was a pass.

If the offensive line struggled, that was as much a scheme indictment as it was an individual one.

There were no extra bodies in the run game or in pass protection. Stevenson logged just six pass-blocking snaps out of the 36 passing plays he was on the field for. Henderson logged just two on the 21 pass snaps he played. There was little-to-no help for the offensive line from the backs — and that was by design.

Why? That’s the better question, and one we can’t confidently answer. Maybe the idea was “our five are better than your four,” especially considering Stevenson logged just four pass-blocking snaps against the Houston Texans — another defense built around winning with a four-man rush.

Whatever the thinking was, the result was clear. It wasn’t pretty for Maye, the offensive line, or anyone tied to New England’s offense.

And it put the Patriots’ defense in constant discomfort as it worked to keep Seattle out of the end zone. The defense did a commendable job until the fourth quarter, when the dam finally broke — largely because Maye, after a month-plus of constant duress, finally folded under the pressure and turned the ball over three times in the final 17 minutes as New England tried to mount a late comeback.

In Super Bowl LX, the Patriots finally looked young.

New England ranked fourth in the NFL in rookie snaps during the regular season (behind the Browns, Jets, and Titans) and set an NFL record with 416 games played by first-year players for a team that reached the Super Bowl.

As one of the league’s youngest rosters, few expected the level of consistent play the Patriots displayed in 2025.

Realistically, New England looked closer to 20-0 entering the Super Bowl than 10-7 — the “homer” preseason prediction that floated around the media circuit. Their only losses came in Week 1 against the Las Vegas Raiders, the fumbleitis game against the Pittsburgh Steelers in Week 3, and the blown 21-3 lead against the Buffalo Bills in Week 15.

At no point during the 2025 season did the Patriots get blown out — until the biggest stage.

It was bound to happen eventually. A perfect storm of facing a fourth top-five defense (and pass rush) in as many weeks, paired with an offense that relentlessly pounded the edges, finally did them in.

Brutal timing — but the deficiencies that had been discussed in theory finally surfaced in reality, and they laid out a blueprint for the roster’s next evolution.

And for players currently on the team, it’s still the Patriots’ youth that got them here — and will remain the foundational bedrock for years to come.

Christian Gonzalez (23) played to his locally acclaimed status when the lights were brightest. On 40 coverage snaps, he faced just five targets and forced four incompletions, with three pass breakups and a passer rating when targeted of 40.4.

Maye (23), for better or worse, was the offense in the Super Bowl — as he was for long stretches of the regular season, with far greater success — and he has the résumé to prove it as MVP runner-up and second-team All-Pro.

He finished 2025 with 5,222 passing yards on 424-of-612 passing (69.3% completion percentage at 8.5 yards per attempt), 37 passing touchdowns, 12 interceptions, and a passer rating of 107.4 including the playoffs. He added 628 rushing yards on 132 attempts (4.8 yards per attempt) and five rushing touchdowns.

Campbell is 22 and coming off a torn MCL. He’ll have a full offseason in the program now, rather than splitting his time between NFL prep and draft process. He’ll get better, and the Patriots are sticking with him.

We could go down the list from the 2025 draft — including Craig Woodson, who led the NFL with 30 tackles in the postseason — but the point stands: New England is still at the starting line.

With Vrabel and McDaniels entering Year 2, the Patriots will have something in droves this offseason that didn’t exist a year ago: continuity.

2025 laid the bedrock for future success — and New England has a Super Bowl appearance to show for it.

Now that we’re on to 2026, the Patriots have an incredible foundation to build upon — and the ability to do so in multiple ways.

With continuity comes development, and that’s where growth must start: from within. Players like Campbell, Henderson, and Kyle Williams will be counted on to take Year 2 leaps in McDaniels’ offense, while Maye and Gonzalez will continue to be held to a high standard as leaders of their respective units.

To supplement that internal growth, New England also has top-10 salary cap space (estimated $42 million) and 11 draft picks in 2026 — all potential trade assets.

The Patriots also have just six unrestricted free agents from the 2025 roster: TE Austin Hooper, Edge K’Lavon Chaisson, IDL Khyiris Tonga, S Jaylinn Hawkins, LB Jack Gibbens, OT Vederian Lowe, and OT Thayer Munford Jr.

After a Super Bowl appearance in Year 1 of the Vrabel era, New England is positioned to add reinforcements to an already talented, young roster heading into Year 2.

That’s where the focus turns now.

How will the Patriots get better in 2026? What are their biggest positions of need?

We’ll be dissecting those questions — and much more — all offseason on Patriots Roundtable.

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