Lessons learned for Drake Maye, Josh McDaniels from Super Bowl LX

The story of the 2025 Patriots was an unexpected, undisputed success.

Mike Vrabel and Drake Maye powered a franchise’s rebirth. A 14-win regular season led into a Super Bowl run. The end of this story, though, was a multi-layered failure.

The Patriots got out-coached, out-played and out-classed in Super Bowl LX. Vrabel made a handful of curious decisions, and his offensive staff repeatedly failed to adjust or stress an elite Seattle defense. Were it not for a fourth quarter full of empty-calorie counting stats, Drake Maye’s performance would have been regarded as one of the worst in Super Bowl history.

Advanced metrics put Maye there anyway.

But the Patriots’ problems did not start, nor end with him. The Seahawks immediately generated free rushers against two of the Pats’ more common protections, specifically with double-edge pressure and overload blitzes through the “B” gap (space between the guard and tackle). Slot cornerback Devon Witherspoon blitzed seven times, recorded a sack, caused Maye’s late pick-six and hit him another time.

Seattle followed those same rush paths over and over to reach Maye, limiting his impact as a scrambler and toying with his internal clock as a passer. That’s on coaching. Rookie left tackle Will Campbell has since become the face of the Patriots’ protection woes in the Super Bowl, and, yes, his team-high eight pressures deserve a heap of criticism. He was awful.

But the Seahawks beat the Patriots schematically as badly as they did physically, and every offensive lineman allowed multiple pressures, including four who let up a sack.

Defensively, the Pats held their ground. They applied sufficient pressure on Sam Darnold, who never broke under a cascade of creative blitzes.

Here’s what else the film revealed about the Pats’ Super Bowl loss:

Drake Maye

27-of-43 for 295 yards, 2 TDs, 2 INTs, 6 sacks, 37 yards

Accurate throw percentage: 65.4%

Under pressure: 6-of-13 for 75 yards, TD, INT, 6 sacks, 38 rushing yards

Against the blitz: 3-of-6 for 18 yards, INT, sack

Behind the line: 8-of-8 for 68 yards

0-9 yards downfield: 13-of-18 for 94 yards, TD

10-19 yards downfield: 3-of-8 for 48 yards, INT

20+ yards downfield: 3-of-7 for 85 yards, TD, INT

Notes: The greatest obstacle between Maye and the clean, boring game Darnold played was his play under pressure.

Both quarterbacks faced high pressure rates and posted identical average snap-to-throw times, per Next Gen Stats, but Maye took six sacks to Darnold’s one. His inability to convert a few of those losses into throwaways set the Pats back on multiple drives, as did the Seahawks’ clever blitz tactics. Maye had three turnovers under duress (zero for Darnold), looked down at the rush and slid the protection the wrong way on his pick-six, one of the few times Seattle blitzed him in the second half.

Maye’s consistent, bordering on predictable, cadence in the second half helped the Seahawks time a few blitzes right after he clapped for the snap. The Seahawks blitzed Maye initially with the idea of affecting his internal clock, just as the Chargers and Broncos did early in prior playoff games, and succeeded. In addition to the blitz pressure, their coverage disguises rendered some of Maye’s go-to indicators  — like a defender following a motioned receiver across the formation as a man-to-man coverage tell  — useless. That’s good defensive coaching.

Drake Maye makes promise to Patriots fans after postseason struggles

Though Seahawks safety Julian Love, who caught Maye’s second interception, was caught on a live mic saying Maye hesitated slightly on that play before unloading an errant deep throw toward his intended target. Maye’s inaccuracy also spread to third-down misses for DeMario Douglas and Kayshon Boutte in the third quarter and a bad miss to Hunter Henry in the first half. Those same pass-catchers authored a big chapter in the book of Patriots’ offensive failures Sunday, most glaringly with poor separation, rough routes and minimal yards after the catch.

Between that, the poor pass protection and subpar coaching, Maye was at a disadvantage all night. His team let him down. But independent of his surroundings, Maye did not play well enough to win. And as the quarterback, that’s often all that matters.

Critical areas

Turnovers: Patriots 3, Seahawks 0

Explosive play rate: Patriots 7.5%, Seahawks 7.1%

Success rate: Patriots 41%, Seahawks 33%

Red-zone efficiency: Patriots 1-1, Seahawks 1-4

Defensive pressure rate: Patriots 40%, Seahawks 43.4%

Offense

Game plan

Personnel breakdown: 80% of snaps in 11 personnel, 10% of snaps in 12 personnel, 1.5% of snaps in 21F personnel, 1.5% of snaps in 21H personnel, 7% of snaps in 22 personnel.***

Personnel production: 41.5% success rate in 11 personnel, 0% success rate in 12 personnel, 100% success rate in 21F personnel, 100% success rate in 21H personnel, 50% success rate in 22 personnel.

First-down down play-calls: 65.5% pass (40% success rate), 34.5% run (20% success rate)

Play-action rate: 11.3%

You almost wondered if Josh McDaniels and Co. started game-planning a couple nights before kickoff.

The Pats executed a straightforward plan with the aforementioned protection issues, getting pantsed early by a five-down front, where Seattle dropped its defensive tackles and sent blitzers off each edge into a backfield where Rhamondre Stevenson had to choose between them. Later, the Seahawks repeatedly fired two blitzers through the same B gap, out-numbering the weakside of the O-line where center Garrett Bradbury often turned away from, and again overwhelmed Stevenson 2-to-1 in the backfield.

That led to a couple sacks and several pressures, most glaringly in the first and fourth quarters. Protection aside, McDaniels’ bland plan didn’t do enough to help his players, most of whom were overmatched in 1-on-1s against an uber talented Seattle defense. The Pats mostly worked from 11 personnel (what Seattle wants), called one snap of jumbo personnel (six offensive linemen), gained 21 yards on that snap and never returned to it. They never worked from empty formations, a minor weakness for the Seahawks. No trick plays. No quarterback option runs.

McDaniels wisely tried to spark his run game with plays Seattle had been weakest against, draws and duo, but predictably, the Seahawks were able to contain one of the league’s most inconsistent rushing attacks. He also had a few well-timed calls to break the Seahawks’ two-high coverages and bracket coverage of the slot receivers. But ultimately, the Pats needed more plays in space for players like TreVeyon Henderson and DeMario Douglas, or just more explosive players like them. Because playing these Seahawks straight up was a bad idea.

Player stats

Broken tackles: WR DeMario Douglas 3, RB Rhamondre Stevenson 2, RB TreVeyon Henderson, TE Hunter Henry

Pressure allowed: LT Will Campbell 8 (sack, QB hit, 6 hurries), RT Morgan Moses 4 (sack, 3 hurries), Team 4 (sack, QB hit, 2 hurries), RG Mike Onwenu (3 hurries), LG Jared Wilson (2 sacks), C Garrett Bradbury 2 (sack, hurry)

Run stuffs allowed: Team 2, RT Morgan Moses

Drops: N/A

‘It sucks’: Patriots OT Will Campbell opens up about Super Bowl play, criticism

Notes

• Rookie left tackle Will Campbell got powered into the backfield on the opening snap. He gave up just two more pressures through the end of the third quarter, so of the damage he allowed was when the game was out of hand, but it’s worth noting most playoff opponents successfully bull-rushed him early to set up other rushers.
• Does Campbell need to change positions? That question is wildly premature from this view, but there’s no question there are wrinkles to be ironed out in his game, including how he anchors against power.
• Left guard Jared Wilson had the worst snap of the day against a power rush, getting bulldozed by Rylie Mills while Mills reached around for a sack of Maye. Wilson’s development arguably bears watching as much as Maye’s, given how Seattle successfully picked on both of them.
• Right tackle Morgan Moses pass-protected as poorly as Campbell did until late in the game. His future, entering his age-35 season, bears watching.
• Out wide, Kayshon Boutte put forth his worst game of the season. He caught one of five targets, and Seattle cornerback Josh Jobe bodied him out of bounds on a third-down target in the third quarter. Boutte represented one of the Pats’ few paths to explosive plays, and the Seahawks shut him down.
• The Patriots seemed to target Jobe often, but none of their receivers were up to the task of winning consistently versus single coverage aside from Mack Hollins. Stefon Diggs drew some extra attention, but never seriously threatened Seattle.
• A quiet game for Hunter Henry, and downright bad night for No. 2 tight end Austin Hooper, a pending free agent. The Pats would be wise to invest in this position this offseason.
• Credit to Rhamondre Stevenson for running hard into a brick wall. His vision and blitz pickup continued to separate him from TreVeyon Henderson, though both averaged two-plus yards per carry after contact. Stevenson also did well as a pass-catcher and finished with more postseason receiving yards than Diggs.

Defense

Game plan

Personnel breakdown: 46.5% three-corner nickel, 36.5% base, 8.5 goal-line, 8.5% dime****

Coverage breakdown: 63% zone, 37% man

Blitz rate: 54%

Blitz efficacy: 43.5% offensive success rate and 5.7 yards per play allowed

Defensive play-caller Zak Kuhr cycled through a variety of coverages, pressures and disguises to fool Sam Darnold, but there were a few basic tenets underneath all the window dressing of the Patriots’ last game plan.

They worked to stop the run through base personnel and/or a five-down front that gapped out Seattle’s preferred outside zone scheme. In coverage, Kuhr slightly favored single-high defenses to add an extra body into the box, while Christian Gonzalez also often shadowed star Seahawks receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba. And the Pats blitzed Darnold on more than half of his dropbacks to force the one-time turnover machine into a fumble or interception.

Whoops.

Darnold’s mobility (read: sack avoidance) was a major factor in nullifying the Pats’ high pressure rate, something Maye could learn from in time. But what hurt the Patriots most was their top-ranked play-action pass defense cracking against what appeared to be the same outside zone run play they had successfully contained all season and that night against Seattle. Instead, at his 16-yard line in the fourth quarter, linebacker Jack GIbbens lost tight end AJ Barner after Barner had motioned over to what appeared to be a strongside outside zone run, which the Seahawks had previously checked to multiple times. Barner then zipped right by him for an easy end-zone grab.

This was a major battleground in this game, considering how many explosive plays and touchdowns Seattle’s offense derived from play-action passing and how well the Patriots had stopped it most of the year. Two other problems for the Pats: Seattle successfully threw against their goal-line personnel grouping with just three defensive backs breaking out of halftime, when Seattle marched over a 69-yard field goal drive. The Patriots also generated a single pressure in the second half without blitzing.

Barner’s touchdown was Seattle’s only end-zone trip, however, thanks mostly to Gonzalez’s work on Smith-Njigba. Kuhr wisely put his No. 1 corner on the league’s leading receiver, but did not task him with basic man-to-man throughout the game, which would have become a simple coverage tell. Even when the Patriots did play man, their defensive backs would sometimes “bump” assignments to pass Smith-Njigba off whenever he would go in motion to maintain their leverage. Seattle had a hard time establishing a rhythm for their No. 1 receiver, who finished with one catch at Gonzalez’s expense.

Player stats

Pressure: DL Milton Williams 5 (sack, 3 hurries), OLB K’Lavon Chaisson (QB hit, hurry), OLB Harold Landry 2 (QB hit, hurry), S Jaylinn Hawkins 2 (QB hit, hurry), LB Robert Spillane (QB hit), LB Christian Elliss (QB hit), OLB Anfernee Jennings (QB hit), S Craig Woodson (hurry)

Run stuffs: Team 4, Woodson 2, Chaisson

Pass deflections: CB Christian Gonzalez 3, Woodson 2, Williams, Jennings

Missed tackles: Williams 4, Chaisson 2, Hawkins 2, Woodson, Elliss, Spillane, Jennings, S Dell Pettus, DL Christian Barmore, LB Jack Gibbens, DL Cory Durden, CB Marcus Jones, LB Jahlani Tavai