Opening night is almost here, and in my opinion, the New England Patriots need to display two things in Week One. First, they need to play a competitive game. The second is to get a good performance out of Drake Maye. Let’s dive deep.
The last time the Patriots played against the Seattle Seahawks, they got blown out 29-13 in the Super Bowl. The issue is that New England hasn’t played a game since, so the sour taste of that defeat is still fresh. They must exorcise the demons right from the jump.
The team made a big move in the offseason. The Patriots traded for AJ Brown from the Philadelphia Eagles and gave away their 2027 fifth-round pick and 2028 first-round pick. The franchise hopes he gives what Stefon Diggs gave last year and then some.
Last year, Diggs eclipsed 1,000 yards and was a key reason for Maye’s development from year one to year two. Brown is 29 years old, and despite the off-the-field drama he presented in Philly, it’s expected of him to help Maye go up another level.
If the Patriots win or lose a competitive game, it would be reasonable to say that the missing piece was a dynamic playmaker on the outside. Now that they got a true WR1, the thought process is that this team could be even better in 2026. There would be a reasonable amount of optimism.
If New England gets blown out, though, the aftermath gets trickier. The mood would be pure deflation rather than cautious optimism. That’s the main reason why the Patriots need to display a competitive game on opening night.
It’s a mental game.
The second-year QB is a tremendous player. Maye finished year two with 31 touchdowns, eight interceptions, and a 72% completion percentage with a 113.5 passer rating. The 24-year-old finished second in MVP voting to Matthew Stafford.
Despite the incredible year, there is a stark contrast between how Maye played in the regular season and in the postseason. In the 2025 regular season, the Patriots played no defense that was ranked higher than 11th.
In the postseason, every team New England faced was a top-10 defense according to a metric called Defense-adjusted Value Over Average(DVOA). In those four games, Maye had a 58.3% completion rate, a 7:8 touchdown-to-turnover ratio, and a passer rating of 82.2, a significant drop from the 113.5 in the regular season.
The most alarming statistic was sack percentage. That number was up to 14.9%, which is well over the NFL average of 6.5-7.2. The competition was tough, but that significant of a drop-off raises some questions.
Is Maye not quite ready for the postseason? Is his play style not effective against the upper echelon of defenses? Either way, it wouldn’t be a good look so he needs a strong performance against a strong Seattle defense.
That’s the second thing the Patriots need to display: A strong performance from Maye.
It’s rare that an opening night game feels like a must-win. For the Patriots, however, it doesn’t feel unreasonable to call it that.
With the way the season ended last year and how Maye looked all postseason after a dominant regular season, it’s important that the Patriots need to display the two things explained above.
The game needs to be competitive, so New England internally has the belief that the season before wasn’t a fluke and wasn’t a direct result of the weak schedule. For Maye, it would give him some confidence for the rest of the season.
On a year where the schedule is ranked the sixth hardest, the second-year QB is going to need all the confidence he can get. How many games will the Patriots win this year?
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