Coach Mike Vrabel, quarterback Drake Maye, and the Patriots must dust themselves off after a Super Bowl loss to the Seahawks and regroup for next season.
Coach Mike Vrabel, quarterback Drake Maye, and the Patriots must dust themselves off after a Super Bowl loss to the Seahawks and regroup for next season.Barry Chin/Globe Staff
Even after repeating the message that they weren’t done to each player as they shook hands by the locker room door one final time — that an improbable trip to the Super Bowl after back-to-back four-win seasons was just the foundation — Patriots coach Mike Vrabel was realistic the next day.
Sustained success is never certain in the NFL, no matter how close the outcome of a season might lead any team to believe.
The Chiefs are the closest thing the league has seen to a dynasty since the Patriots in the 2010s. They reached the Super Bowl a year ago, then missed the playoffs this season.
The 49ers’ overtime Super Bowl loss the season before that was so gut-wrenching they fired defensive coordinator Steve Wilks and retooled for a return. They never saw a 6-11 season coming.
As a player, Vrabel has firsthand experience of the extremes of the swing after a Super Bowl season.
He was part of the team that won the Super Bowl in the 2001 season, his first in New England. The next year, the Patriots missed the playoffs.
“We know how difficult this is,” Vrabel said. “Won’t be easy, it never will be. So, we’ll have a plan.”
Getting to the Super Bowl is difficult enough. Getting back is its own mountain. Only eight teams have lost the Super Bowl and returned the next season. Just three went back and won it.
No team has done it since the Patriots lost to the Eagles in the Super Bowl in the 2017 season, then defeated the Rams in the Super Bowl the next year.
Getting to the playoffs after losing a Super Bowl is its own feat. Nearly a third of the teams that have lost the Super Bowl missed the playoffs the next season.
The Patriots are an example of how quickly things can swing in the NFL. Morphing into one of the best teams in the league after consecutive 4-13 seasons was a surprise inside and outside the locker room.
The expectations going into next season will be different.
“To have so much success so early, it’s amazing,” cornerback Carlton Davis said. “Obviously, we didn’t get it done and that still stings, and it’s going to hurt, but going into this offseason we can use it for motivation and come back stronger.”
Typically, teams that have lost Super Bowls have gone into the wilderness for a while after. Ten of the franchises that have lost Super Bowls still haven’t gotten back. For seven teams, the climb back took at least seven years.
But recently, teams have started to make the climb quicker.
The Rams got back to the Super Bowl three years after losing to the Patriots in the 2018 season. The 49ers returned four years after losing to the Chiefs in the 2019 season. The Chiefs shook off their 2020 season loss to the Buccaneers and got back two years later. The Eagles bounced back from their loss to the Chiefs in the 2022 season, returned to the Super Bowl two years later, and won it.
“First off, it’s the foundation,” Patriots cornerback Marcus Jones said. “Having the right leaders in the building, guys that understand what it takes, that’s important.”
At 23, Drake Maye became the second-youngest quarterback to reach a Super Bowl, and getting that experience at that age was valuable.
“I think you can use it as a learning experience and an experience that I have a chance to remember for the rest of my career, the rest of my life,” he said.
Historically, a quarterback’s first Super Bowl appearance has been something of a litmus test.
All of the quarterbacks who anchored dynasties — from Tom Brady (seven championships) to Terry Bradshaw and Joe Montana (four), to Troy Aikman and Patrick Mahomes (three) — secured the first one on their first trip.
Most of the quarterbacks who lost their first Super Bowl never returned to another one, let alone won.
Jalen Hurts defied odds last season when he led the Eagles back to the Super Bowl and hoisted the trophy. Before that, the last quarterback to return to the Super Bowl after losing his first appearance was Jim Kelly, who took the Bills to four straight Super Bowls from the 1990-93 seasons (and lost all of them). In the three decades between Kelly and Hurts, 18 quarterbacks lost their first Super Bowl appearance and never returned.
The only quarterbacks who have won multiple Super Bowls despite losing their first one are John Elway and Bob Griese.
Elway lost three Super Bowls, starting in the mid-1980s. He was 37 when he won his first of back-to-back championships in the 1997 season.
Griese lost his first Super Bowl in the 1971 season, then took the Dolphins back and won it the next two seasons.
Maye said this past season taught him how difficult it is to get to the Super Bowl and how precious the opportunities are.
“That’s what you go to work for and improve and try not to stay the same level coming into the next year,” he said. “Not try to act like, ‘Man, we’re here and we’re fine. We just need to keep doing what we’re doing.’ You’ve got to elevate, and teams are going to be looking at what we did, how we improved so quickly, how we won the division and won the AFC and a lot of great things. So, teams are going to try to have a bull’s-eye on us and try to stop us. So, we’ve got to try not to be complacent and know that the teams are going to be chasing us, and we’ve got to try to chase the Seahawks.”
Julian Benbow can be reached at julian.benbow@globe.com.